Trump claims his political movement is Make America Great Again (MAGA) -- but even a brief look at everything the first Trump Administration did abroad plainly shows that Trump and his lackeys have no interest whatsoever in making America great. Every foreign policy decision Trump has ever made helped Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at America's expense.

Trump's real agenda is best described by the many times Trump vowed to be Dictator On Day One (DODO).

Trump declared: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Three months later, Trump told an interviewer "I don't know" when asked if he has to uphold the Constitution.

Trump committed twelve impeachable offenses in the next two weeks. Never before has an American President broken so many laws in so short a time.

Trump broke his oath to uphold the Constitution within hours, fulfilling his 2022 call to "terminate" parts of the Constitution.

Though the parts of the Constitution he'd vowed to "terminate" in 2022 specifically referred to the clauses that required him to leave office after being voted out, he'd also vowed on the campaign trail to get rid of birthright citizenship -- the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment that guarantees citizenship to any baby born in America.

Trump's DODO executive order announced that, starting in February, the United States government would no longer recognize the citizenship of babies born in America to a parent who wasn't a citizen -- even if that parent was a legal permanent resident and the other parent was a citizen. These babies wouldn't be citizens -- anywhere.

As The Atlantic pointed out,

This was illegal and unconstitutional. If Trump wants to change the Constitution, he has to propose a Constitutional Amendment and go through the long process of getting it ratified. It can't be done by executive order.

Ironically, two of Trump's three wives weren't yet citizens when four of his five children were born. If Trump gets his way, four of his own children would lose their citizenship and be deported!

Even though a judge blocked Trump's DODO order a few days later, the matter isn't closed. Trump issued an illegal order and tried to throw out the Constitution by decree. He ordered the government to disregard the Constitution and illegally strip the citizenship from American babies born to an American parent on American soil. There is only one possible response: Trump must be impeached and removed from office. Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden issued an illegal order to overrule the Fourteenth Amendment, they would have been impeached within fourteen hours.

(2) Treason: Abuse of the Pardon Power and Giving Aid and Comfort to Putin

On his second day in office, Trump abused the pardon power by pardoning 1,600 convicted DODO terrorists who attacked Congress at his behest on January 6, 2021 and attempted to assassinate the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. The terrorists' purpose was to force Congress to throw out the results of the 2020 election and install Trump as dictator. The attack resulted in nine deaths. Though the President does have the power to pardon convicts, the President does not have the power to incite people to commit crimes on his behalf (which he did on January 6, 2021) and then pardon them (which he did four years later.)

Moreover, the Constitution reads:

Since Trump pardoned the terrorists who attempted to violently overthrow the Constitution in 2021, that plainly constitutes giving aid and comfort to the Constitution's enemies.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden pardoned over 1600 terrorists who attacked the United States Capitol in the attempt to install a dictatorship, they would have been impeached within sixteen minutes.

Other Presidents have abused the pardon power and pardoned one or two high-profile crooks -- such as Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Trump, however, has abused the pardon power to an unprecedented level. Since returning to the White House, Trump has pardoned fraudsters, tax cheats, embezzlers, a sheriff who took bribes, and (especially) wealthy donors and their relatives. As noted below, Trump later ordered investigations into public figures who criticized him, none of whom have been accused of any crimes. Trump has perverted the pardon power into a tool to reward crooked friends who give him money and punish innocent people who disagree with him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and a dictator who wants to destroy America. Putin and his intelligence services have embarked on a decades-long campaign to disrupt and discredit the world's democracies, especially western Europe and the United States. Putin's efforts included the 2016 cyberattacks that helped propel Donald Trump into his first term. Russian agents later tried to disrupt the 2024 election by calling in bogus bomb threats to polling places.

In February 2022, Putin ordered the conquest of Ukraine -- a peaceful democracy that posed no threat to him. A similar situation happened in 1990 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered the conquest of Kuwait -- a peaceful nation that posed no threat to him either. Saddam's invasion was condemned around the world, including by then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush. In contrast, Trump called Putin a "genius."

The Ukrainians were outnumbered and outgunned, and Putin expected to conquer Ukraine in a matter of weeks. Instead, Ukraine showed heroic bravery and resilience. Though 45,000 Ukrainians have died at Russian hands, Russia has only managed to conquer about a fifth of Ukraine. At the rate he's going, it will take Putin another 83 years to conquer all of Ukraine.

On February 18, 2025 -- less than a month after returning to the Presidency -- Trump denied reality and claimed Ukraine had "started" the war by defending themselves against Putin's attempt to conquer them. "You [Ukrainians] should have never started it, you could have made a deal," Trump said. "I could have made a deal that would have given them almost all of the land." Trump consistently repeats Putin's propaganda that Ukraine was the agressor and Russia the victim. "You don't start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles," Trump said in April. Trump has told tens of thousands of lies since entering politics, and his blatant victim-blaming may be the most obvious. Trump's slander echoed the lies of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler when he ordered the conquest of Poland in September 1939. "This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory," Hitler said in one of his infamous Big Lies. "Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs."

If George H.W. Bush had told the Kuwaitis that they should not have "started" the war with Saddam Hussein -- or if Franklin D. Roosevelt had told Poland that they should not have "started" the war with Hitler -- Congress and the Cabinet would have been stunned into inaction for a few minutes. When they recovered, the Cabinet would have immediately invoked the 25th Amendment to remove the President from power. If that had failed, Congress would have impeached the President and removed him from office.

"Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago... Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House, Putin’s [chief goon], Dmitry Medvedev, posted on X: 'The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.'"

Commentator Keith Olbermann added,

"The President of the United States was insane, was the worst person in the world, was a racist, murderous, psychopathic, quasi-human who isn't even smart enough to realize he was attacking Zelensky, the man who would save him, on behalf of Putin, the man who would destroy them both."

Trump and Vance acted as Putin's lackeys, blatantly betraying an ally to an enemy.

Taking the side of a brutal dictator like Hitler, Saddam or Putin when he launches a war of conquest against a smaller, peaceful nation (like Poland, Kuwait or Ukraine) is immoral, but isn't necessarily illegal. Taking the side of a brutal dictator who has already attacked the United States when he attacks another country is illegal. As noted above, the Constitution reads: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Putin has attacked the United States with cyberwarfare and propaganda on a dozen documented occasions. By siding with Putin in his attempt to conquer a peaceful neighbor, Trump and Vance certainly gave "Aid and Comfort" to the enemy of the United States.

During his first term, Trump was impeached after he tried to coerce Zelinsky into smearing an innocent man (then-candidate Joe Biden.) If that's an impeachable offense, clearly taking Putin's side against the peaceful neighbor he invaded and trying to bully Zelinsky on Putin's behalf is also an impeachable offense.

(3) Emoluments Violations

Just as he did in his first term, Trump is using the Presidency to enrich himself. Foreign diplomats are staying at hotels he owns in order to curry favor with him. These emoluments violations are unconstitutional. They're illegal to prevent anyone from bribing the President or buying influence with him. The President is supposed to make decisions based on what's best for the country -- not what's best for his pocketbook.

A few days before starting his second term, Trump launched his own meme coin, a form of vanity cryptocurrency. It's unconstitutional for the President to receive foreign emoluments OR domestic emoluments. Anyone who buys a Trump meme coin is essentially giving him a bribe -- transferring real money to Trump in exchange for something that could be worthless tomorrow.

The Atlantic reports that companies from China, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have bought millions of dollars of them. "Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency... discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House."

The Philadelphia Inquirer went into more detail about just how widespread Trump's corruption is.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden used the Presidency to promote their private businesses, they would have been impeached within minutes.

In an even more blatant emoluments violation, in May, Trump accepted a gift from the Qatari royal family -- a $400 million luxury jumbo jet. If Clinton, Obama, or Biden had accepted such a gift, they would have been impeached in 400 minutes.

As comedian Seth Meyers pointed out, Republicans made up wild stories for years falsely claiming that President Biden had taken billions in foreign bribes - but didn't say anything when Trump actually did that.

In May, Trump went on a "corruption tour" where he spent taxpayer dollars taking a trip to the Middle East to promote his businesses. As the New Republic pointed out, "Trump's brazen use of the White House to advance his family businesses should be one of the biggest scandals in the country's history.

"It's not America's business that Trump is really there for: It's his family businesses. This swing through three Gulf states, which kicked off on Monday, is the clearest and most damning instance yet of his approach to governance in his second term, where official business and personal business are fully intertwined.
"Qatar is buying favor with the president in an act of deep and brazen corruption. Trump wants to be treated as a king, and Qatar is playing ball. Will Qatar be rewarded by favorable treatment by the U.S. government for as long as Trump is president? Of course it will. This is exactly how Trump has always wanted to govern -- via personal relationships, in which foreign leaders and business magnates grovel before him. This is exactly how he's governing during his second term." [Trump recently announced deals to build hotels in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.]
"Since assuming office, Trump has backed pro-crypto legislation and shuttered a Department of Justice unit devoted to investigating its use in fraud, money laundering, tax-avoidance schemes, and other crimes -- all actions that benefit his own increasing financial stake in the industry. Most outrageously, he has repeatedly pushed crypto as a means of buying direct access to him.
"The real estate and bitcoin ventures being pursued by [Trump's] children vastly exceed -- by a tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, at least -- the lobbying work done by President Joe Biden's son Hunter, which Trump and many others on the right spent years insisting was a massive scandal.
"What is happening now is unquestionably the biggest corruption scandal in American history."

The Constitution says that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." It also requires the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Trump threatened DODO military or economic warfare against four American allies: Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and Panama. Trump has blatantly said that Canada should become part of the United States in defiance of what Canadians want, and that Denmark should surrender Greenland to the United States regardless of what the people who live there want.

Trump is not joking. When Trump entered politics, he quickly became infamous for his constant firehose of nonsensical bullying lies. When other politicians have engaged in tiny amounts of the cruelty and slander Trump utters on a daily basis, their careers have gone down in flames. Though a single threat against America's closest ally might be taken as Trump's usual malarkey, Trump has repeatedly refered to Canada as the "51st State" and Canada's Prime Minister as "governor." In the course of a few weeks, Trump announced he would redraw the border, seize control of the Great Lakes' water, stop intelligence-sharing with Canada, and stop military cooperation with Canada. His administration falsely accused Canada of being under the control of Mexican drug cartels, and Trump said he would blackmail Canada into agreeing to American annexation. At The Atlantic pointed out, attacking Canada would be suicidal.

The idea of attacking friendly nations is demented. All four nations are democracies who have done nothing to threaten the United States. As Paul deLespinasse writes in Monroe News,

"The idea of seizing Greenland is so far out that even joking about it could be considered an impeachable offense. As a former Republican president, Calvin Coolidge, noted, 'The words of the president have an enormous weight and ought not be used indiscriminately.' … We already have a military base in Greenland by agreement with the Danish government."

The United States has a mutual defense treaty with Canada and Denmark (the North Atlantic Treaty) and a mutual defense treaty with Panama (the Rio Treaty.) Attacking those allies is illegal and unconstitutional -- not to mention idiotic.

Only Congress can declare war. The President cannot.

Who benefits when Trump threatens our allies with military or economic attack? Certainly not the American people, and certainly not our allies. The only person who benefits from the President of the United States attacking friendly nations in violation of the Constitution, international law, and American law is Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden announced military or economic warfare against four allies, they wouldn't have been impeached. The members of their cabinets would have invoked the 25th Amendment and removed them -- because everyone would have immediately realized the President had gone insane.

The Inspectors General are civil servants whose job it is to make sure government employees are complying with the law -- and were a thorn in Trump's side during his first term.

Trump, however, is legally required to inform Congress thirty days before firing an Inspector General. In violation of the law, Trump dismissed eighteen Inspectors General immediately.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden illegally fired eighteen Inspectors General without giving Congress thirty days notice, they would have been impeached within eighteen minutes. In the meantime, tell Congress to reinstate the illegally fired inspectors.

Trump then fired Justice Department officials who were involved in investigating his crimes just as President Richard Nixon did in the Saturday Night Massacre. It's illegal to fire government employees for doing their jobs.

Nixon's firing of Justice Department officials later led to Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump announced a DODO spending freeze. It is illegal for the President to do this. Under the Impoundment Control Act, when Congress agrees to spend money on something and the President signs it, the President cannot decide to keep the money, freeze the money, or spend it on something else. Money approved by Congress must be spent as Congress has directed.

Trump's DODO attempt to freeze the funds was also blocked by a judge.

An internal document revealed that Trump violated the Impoundment Control Act deliberately to provoke a court battle. Trump's plan is to take the matter to the Supreme Court, where he hopes the DODO majority will strike down the Impoundment Control Act the same way they struck down the Voting Rights Act.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden violated the Impoundment Control Act, they would have been impeached the next day.

Trump fired two commissioners and the general counsel at the EEOC.

Though the President has the authority to nominate commissioners, after the Senate confirms them, he does not have the authority to remove them before their terms end.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden fired two EEOC commissioners, they would have been impeached within two hours.

DODO strongman Elon Musk is the world's richest man and largely funded Trump's re-election campaign. Shortly after assuming office, Trump announced that Musk would be charing a committee called the "Department Of Government Efficiency," or DOGE. This is a misnomer, as it's not a department: DOGE consists of Musk himself and a few aides. Furthermore, as detailed below, DOGE has nothing to do with government efficiency or eliminating waste. A more accurate name for it would be Division Of Grift and Embezzlement -- or Dictatorship Of Gluttonous Elon! Musk's first objective was closing down the agencies that enforce the laws regulating his businesses. With no one available to enforce the laws, Musk may have evaded over $2.37 billion in fines for various violations, such as false advertising. After that, Musk cancelled government contracts with his competitors and hired his own businesses to do the work instead.

Trump -- along with his DODO Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, soon gave Musk access to the Treasury Department's payment system.

According to Senator Ron Wyden, Musk now has access to “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it." According to TechCrunch,

Musk's team also accessed the server that handles classified payments, and in doing so may have exposed CIA agents working undercover.

Musk and his team did not have security clearance to access these files.

Why? Musk was not a government employee at the time and has not passed a security check. Even though Trump "hired" Musk a few days later, Musk is unlikely to get a security clearing. Musk is a drug addict and a Nazi sympathizer -- he praised Germany's neo-Nazi AFD party, defended Hitler and other genocidal dictators, and gave Nazi salutes in public. Moreover, Musk is a threat to national security. He has extensive business interests in communist China. Musk also has ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Musk's team then illegally installed their own server on the Treasury's system.

Musk then announced he was illegally shutting down USAID. According to The Atlantic, USAID's mission is to show people around the world what America stands for -- from helping Afghan women and Burmese refugees get an education to feeding starving children in Sudan to vaccinating civilians in Nepal and Nigeria.

Neither Musk nor Trump has the authority to unilaterally shut down a department established by Congress. Moreover: when Musk became a government employee, he became subject to conflict-of-interest laws. It is illegal to use government authority to promote his businesses and sabotage his competitors, which he certainly did by sabotaging USAID from within. Gizmodo reports that "USAID was actually investigating equipment from one of Musk's companies at the time that he attacked the agency... Musk has called the agency 'evil' and a 'criminal organization,' though the fact that USAID was investigating the Starlink activities may suggest ulterior motivations for the billionaire's vitriol." Walter Shaub adds:

"Musk... cannot work on any particular matter affecting a company in which he holds either stock or any other form of ownership interest... Any claim by the Trump administration that wealthy people should be excused from complying with criminal laws just because they're wealthy would be an outrageous, elitist insult to hard working Americans across the country."

Musk and Trump's war on USAID has critical real-life consequences. Contrary to what Musk claims, USAID doesn't give taxpayer money away to foreign countries. USAID buys surplus food from American farmers and distributes it to starving people around the world. Since Trump and Musk suspended USAID's operations, $500 million of American wheat, peas, and soybeans are now sitting in boxes in Houston and other port cities because Musk stopped USAID from sending it to hungry people who need it. If it isn't distributed soon, it will go bad, and Musk will have thrown away $500 million of taxpayer dollars. So much for eliminating government waste!

A court order blocked further DODO dismantling of USAID, but at this writing the food is still going bad instead of being distributed to the needy.

In July, Trump ordered 500 tons of food that the government had already bought with taxpayers' money burned instead of donated to charity. (This appears to be different food than that featured in the earlier report.)

Trump and Bessent gave Musk and his team access to the private information of anyone who's ever done any kind of business transaction with the Federal Government. The private data of millions of innocent American citizens is now in the hands of people with no national security clearance. This violates the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code. It may also violate the Espionage Act. Time Magazine adds:

"Legal experts say granting Musk and his team access to such sensitive government data potentially contravenes multiple federal statutes, including the Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), as well as strict taxpayer privacy provisions under the Internal Revenue Code."

Professor Don Moynihan told Wired: "What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government. We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world."

A few days later, a judge issued a court order denying Musk and his cronies further access to the Treasury systems. However, that wasn't the end of the story. As Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said, "This is the largest data breach in American history. [Musk and his lackeys are] an unlawfully constituted band of renegade tech bros combing through confidential records, sensitive data and critical payment systems."

USAID and the Treasury Department were not the only victims of Trump and Musk's attack on vital government functions. The Huffington Post summed up Trump and Musk's complete ineptitude in this telling piece:

"Imagine becoming president of the United States and one of the first things you do is fire the people in charge of managing the country's nuclear weapons.
"For good measure, imagine you also went ahead and fired scientists trying to prevent a national outbreak of a deadly bird flu, military veterans who run a national crisis line and environmental stewards who keep the country's hugely popular national parks clean and safe for millions of summertime visitors."
Trump and Musk also fired "People Who Make Sure We Have Clean Air And Water... People Who Make Sure The Pacific Northwest Has Electricity [and] Scientists Who Make Sure Medical Devices Are Safe And Effective."

The Atlantic adds that the Trump Administration fired scientists who give Americans advance warnings of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. "Now is precisely the time when governments must invest more heavily in making themselves resilient to these kinds of events," columnist Brian Klaas wrote. "But the United States is doing the opposite." For instance, "In September 2019, [Trump] eliminated an initiative that it saw as government waste: a $200 million program that tracked novel coronaviruses around the world. Three months later, COVID-19 infected its first victim... The U.S. government spent an estimated $4.6 trillion in response to the pandemic that emerged from that virus."

Trump and Musk also effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the government department tasked with ensuring banks and credit agencies are complying with the law. According to Senator Chris Murphy, CFPB officials were fired because they were investigating Musk's companies for possible wrongdoing. Musk fired leadership at the National Labor Relations Board for the same reason. (Murphy's video exposing Trump and Musk's blatant corruption is well worth the watch.)

Trump and Musk also decimated the Homeland Security agency in charge of preventing enemy nations from manipulating American elections.

CNN reported that Trump and Musk fired thousands of government workers without bothering to find out what the people they fired actually did. They had no idea that the people they fired were keeping the government running and the nation safe. For example, a few weeks after a deadly plane crash highlighted the need for airport control towers to be fully staffed, Trump and Musk fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees. This was exactly the opposite of what's necessary to keep airplane travel safe.

Forbes reported that Trump and Musk fired thousands of workers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (in charge of preventing car crashes), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (who rescue people from natural disasters), the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control (who stop diseases from spreading), the Food and Drug Administration (who make sure foods and medicines aren't poisonous), the Education Department (who handle student loans), the IRS (who make sure billionaires like Trump and Musk don't cheat on their taxes), and the Small Business Administration, among others. They also fired the people in charge of protecting Hawaiian airspace from incoming missile attacks.

Musk is using his authority to destroy departments that are investigating wrongdoing at companies he owns -- the definition of corruption.

Musk "oversaw the firing of Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Neuralink, Musk's brain implant company. [Musk] made cuts to a specialized unit with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration focused on overseeing the safety of autonomous vehicles like those made at Tesla. The fired employees include an engineer who worked with crash test dummies and a research psychologist who specializes in drunken driving and speeding... the federal agencies [Musk] has been dismantling have dozens of continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Musk's six companies.

"That includes 24 investigations alone from the National Labor Relations Board and a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission arguing that Musk owes the federal government up to $150 million.

Musk "has also essentially shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was evaluating hundreds of complaints about Tesla, including many about debt collection and loan problems."

Trump also had the DODO Justice Department drop a civil rights investigation into Musk's company SpaceX.

Musk also abused his authority, canceling a government contract with a communications company and assigning it to his own company instead. This was a blatant act of corruption. Tell the Senate to stop him.

It didn't stop there. According to three Senators, Musk has been profiting handsomely from his influence with Trump. Musk accompanied Trump on Trump's recent trip to Saudi Arabia, where the Saudis agreed to start using Starlink. Bangladesh, India, Lesotho and Vietnam also signed up with Starlink in an effort to get Trump to drop his tariffs. This is a blatant corruption on Trump and Musk's part. Musk paid hundreds of millions to get Trump elected, and Trump has used American foreign policy to make Musk billions. It should go without saying that American foreign policy is supposed to protect the United States and promote American values -- not to make Musk ruch.

An oversight agency concluded Trump and Musk's firings are illegal. A judge reached the same conclusion a week later.

Faced with a Musk-ordered shutdown, the U.S. African Development Foundation -- one of the government's smallest agencies -- filed a lawsuit arguing that Musk's DOGE is illegal and unconstitutional, and that Musk has no government authority as he was never confirmed by the Senate.

Trump and Bessent must be impeached and removed from office, and a Special Prosecutor must be appointed to investigate Musk and his team. Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden given a drug addict with ties to hostile dictators access to the United States Treasury, they would have been impeached within a week. Sign the petitions telling Congress to block Musk's access to Social Security, Medicare, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tell Congress to cancel Musk's government contracts (sign the petitions at Win Without War and Demand Progress.)

This merely scratches the surface of what Trump, Musk, Bessent, and DOGE have done. Cruel, stupid, greedy, and incompetent policies are not necessarily illegal, and as such are outside the scope of this article. For more information, watch the video by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

Note: though links to petitions are provided, the truth is that signing petitions doesn't really do much. The best way to stop Musk and Trump is to call, write, and email your representatives and Senators and demand action. Also: call, write, and email your Governor and your State legislators, and tell them to tax all Musk's products through the roof. If Trump can slap tariffs on imports -- the only purpose of which is to hurt American consumers -- American States can raise taxes on products sold by fascists.

Musk officially left his government position in June, having ruined people's lives. Tens of thousands of people have already died of disease and malnutrition because Trump and Musk froze or cancelled foreign aid. DOGE was a scam -- it had nothing to do with efficiency, and it cost more money than it saved. DOGE's fraud was created by Musk himself. Musk used taxpayer money to promote his businesses; awarded government contracts to himself; fired commissioners investigating his businesses; fired federal employees regulating his businesses' industries; incorporated American citizens' private data into his software; installed his own lackeys in departments that regulate or contract with his businesses; used government offices to investigate his competitors; and used his government position to secure business contracts with other countries.

Trump declared a DODO emergency at the southern border (even though illegal border crossings are down) and declared a DODO energy emergency (even though our current energy production is the highest in history.)

Declaring an "emergency" is one of the few ways the President can spend money not approved by Congress. However: the President's emergency powers do not extend to him stealing funds by declaring an emergency when there is no emergency. That's not a loophole – it's an excuse. According to Mother Jones, one of the reasons Trump declared a bogus "energy emergency" is to exempt fossil fuel companies from environmental laws and allow them to pollute rivers and wetlands.

The Atlantic points out that Congress gave the President authority to institute tariffs in an emergency. Trump's tariffs, however, are unconstututional -- because there is no emergency.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden declared a national emergency when there was no emergency, they would have been impeached within a week.

The American Prospect points out that the whole point of the firings and layoffs is to prevent the government from functioning. In cases where Congress has refused to cancel programs that Trump and Musk don't like, they just fire everyone in the department so the work Congress approved doesn't get done.

Even if a war of conquest were legal -- which it isn't -- the President cannot declare war unilaterally. Only Congress can declare war. Even though DODO Republicans control both houses of Congress by a margin of eleven votes, even they (hopefully) aren't crazy enough to send American troops into the middle of an ongoing conflict with no easy solutions that's been raging for longer than most of us have been alive.

This is exactly what terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and DAESH want. "Global jihadist groups will also use a narrative of the United States occupying Arab lands as a rallying cry for new recruits," one expert told NBC News. "This kind of language only is going to galvanize groups that want to kill Americans," said another. A third expert added, "A group like Al Qaeda has been desperate for something like this."

Trump's statements make it obvious that he doesn't understand the situation in Gaza at all and has no idea what he's talking about. If Trump weren't President of the United States, his cluelessness and naivete would make him a pathetic joke. Trump is currently the President, though. He's talking about committing war crimes, turning two million people into refugees, and triggering terrorist attacks against the United States like this is all completely normal. "Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area," Trump claimed. He thinks Gaza is a slum in the United States, not a disputed territory on the other side of the planet.

As commentator Keith Olbermann said, "The land is real to him... The people are just in the way. Sure, they live there in Gaza. Sure, they will just move because he says so... That's not crazy policy. That's not crazy politics. That's just crazy -- unsupported delusions of grandeur."

Comedian Seth Meyers put together a montage of all the times Trump railed against nation-building in the Mideast -- exactly the thing Trump is proposing to do now.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden announced they were sending American troops into the middle of the Arab-Israeli conflict with the intention of committing war crimes, they wouldn't have been impeached. Their cabinets would have invoked the 25th Amendment and removed them -- because the President had obviously gone insane.

"Questions asked of several current and former officials up for top intelligence agency and law enforcement posts revolved around two events that have become President Donald Trump's litmus test to distinguish friend from foe: [Interviewees] were asked to give 'yes' or 'no' responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 'an inside job?' And was the 2020 presidential election 'stolen?' ... These individuals, who did not give the desired straight 'yes' answers, were not selected. ... The questions were posed in direct interviews conducted by personnel hiring for the new administration. ... Separately, at least two individuals in FBI field offices outside Washington, who were being interviewed for senior positions, were asked similar questions, said one U.S. official familiar with the incidents. The questions included: Who were the 'real patriots' on Jan. 6? Who won the 2020 election? Who is your 'real boss?'"

Trump's DODO goal appears to be to turn intelligence and law enforcement into a secret police force like those of totalitarian regimes. If FBI and intelligence agents are being denied promotions for answering questions with facts, this means that Trump wants a law enforcement apparatus that doesn't care about the truth and an intelligence service that can't tell friend from foe. According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, this is unconstitutional: public officials are prohibited from working against the duties of their offices. Law enforcement officials cannot refuse to believe evidence. Intelligence officials are forbidden from threatening national security. The Hatch Act "prohibits... politicized coercion of government employees." Also, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, the Hatch Act makes it illegal to "engage in political activity for a candidate while on duty, in a government office, in uniform, or while using a government vehicle." This likely includes telling job applicants that they are ineligible for promotion if they don't believe DODO propaganda.

If President Clinton had directed his subordinates to ask people up for promotion whether he'd had an affair with Monica Lewinsky -- and had denied promotions to people who said that he had -- Clinton would have been impeached again within minutes.

The Constitution requires the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Trump cannot decide which laws to enforce and which not to.

If Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden had announced the Justice Department would no longer prosecute people for giving bribes, they'd have been impeached within minutes. Bribery is one of the "high crimes" the Constitution cites as grounds for impeachment.

A few weeks later, Trump announced that the Associated Press would no longer be allowed to cover presidential events because they didn't play along with Trump's bogus name change. "We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America," Trump said. This violated the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It's unconstitutional for Trump to retaliate against journalists for reporting facts -- or for accurately reading a map. (The Associated Press filed suit.)

If Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden had announced that they were unilaterally changing the name of an international body of water and retaliated against reporters for using the correct name, their cabinets would have realized the President was suffering from delusions and removed him from office using the 25th Amendment.

On February 19, Trump wrote: "LONG LIVE THE KING!" on social media. The DODO White House social media accounts then posted pictures of Trump dressed as a king.

According to Congress,

"Impeachment has been used to remove government officers who abuse the power of the office; conduct themselves in a manner incompatible with the purpose and function of their office; or misuse the office for improper or personal gain."

For the President to declare himself king meets all three criteria: abuse of power, behavior incompatible with being President of the United States, and misuse of the Presidency for personal gain. If Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden had written "LONG LIVE THE KING!" and posted pictures of themselves as kings, an impeachment inquiry would have been opened in seventeen minutes and seventy-six seconds.

In June, Trump ordered the army to hold a parade on his birthday. This cost taxpayers $45 million. The government wastes money all the time, and doing so is not in and of itself illegal. However, when taken in the context of Trump declaring himself king, it definitely qualifies as misuse of the Presidency for personal gain. The President ordering a military parade on his birthday violates the spirit of the Constitution, if not the exact letter.

If Clinton, Obama or Biden had done this, Congress would have opened an impeachment investigation immediately.

Trump's DODO address to Congress on March 5, 2025 was filled with blatant, obvious lies. Even the parts that weren't outrlght lies were taken out of context and distorted beyond all recognition. Lying to Congress is a felony. If President Bill Clinton had lied in a context where he was legally obligated to tell the truth... yeah.

Trump has set up a DODO bribery system where millionaires can pay him $5 million for a private dinner meeting with him, or $1 million to dine with him and other guests. The Constitution specifically mentions bribery as an impeachable offense. Had Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden accepted five-million-dollar bribes in exchange for dinner meetings, they'd have been impeached in five minutes.

Trump illegally fired two members of the Federal Trade Commission, a government department in charge of enforcing anti-trust laws. Supreme Court precedent held that Commissioners cannot be fired in the middle of their terms for political reasons. Both fired Commissioners are Democrats. One of the Commissioners pointed out that the Commission has open investigations into Facebook and Amazon -- whose founders have political connections to Trump and attended his inauguration. The other Commissioner agreed, telling CNN that "our laws need to be enforced without fear or favor and specifically, without commissioners fearing that they will get fired for failing to do a favor for the President's allies." Had Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden fired two Republican commissioners in the middle of their terms, they'd have been impeached in two weeks.

Trump sanctioned three law firms who represented clients who were political opponents of Trump (such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) or tried to bring Trump and his criminal co-conspirators to justice during the Biden Administration (such as former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith.) Trump specifically ordered employees' clearances revoked and barred attorneys from entering Federal buildings.

Not only is it unethical for Trump to use his power to retaliate against his political opponents and their lawyers, it's unconstitutional. The Sixth Amendment reads "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right... to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." It will be impossible for those firms to represent their clients if their attorneys can't enter Federal courthouses!

A brief filed by one of the firms goes into detail of how unconstitutional Trump's order was and how many laws and precedents it broke. "...It is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. Because it does so without notice and an opportunity to be heard, and because it punishes the entire firm for the purported misconduct of a handful of lawyers who are not employees of the firm, it is an unconstitutional violation of procedural due process and of the substantive due process right to practice one’s professional livelihood... it denies the firm the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Because the Order punishes the firm for the clients with which it has been associated and the legal positions it has taken on matters of election law, the Order constitutes retaliatory viewpoint discrimination and, therefore, violates the First Amendment rights of free expression and association, and the right to petition the government for redress. Because the Order compels disclosure of confidential information revealing the firm’s relationships with its clients, it violates the First Amendment. Because the Order retaliates against [the firm] for its diversity-related speech, it violates the First Amendment. Because the Order is vague in proscribing what is prohibited “diversity, equity and inclusion,” it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment... the Order violates the right to counsel afforded by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments."

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden signed an executive order punishing three law firms because they disagreed with their clients, they'd have been impeached in three days.

In March, Trump signed an illegal order making it harder for people to vote. According to the Constitution, the States -- not the President -- govern how Federal elections are conducted in their States. Congress can override the States under certain circumstances -- but the President cannot. Trump's DODO order ignored the Constitution and requires all voters to present a passport or a REAL ID in order to vote. 9% of voters don't have easy access to either. Trump's DODO order also required voters' current legal name to match the name on their birth certificate. This was specifically designed to prevent married women from voting, and thus violated the Nineteenth Amendment. The order also required States to throw out all absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day -- even if they were postmarked on Election Day. Furthermore, Trump's order gave Elon Musk access to voting records. (As noted above, Musk is a Nazi sympathizer and drug addict.) A judge later blocked Trump's order.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden tried to illegally force the States to make it harder for innocent American citizens to vote, Congress would have launched an impeachment inquiry immediately.

Shortly before leaving office, President Joe Biden issued pre-emptive pardons for a dozen innocent people Trump had vowed to punish when returning to power -- even though they had not done anything remotely criminal. Two months after returning to the Presidency, Trump announced that those pardons would be "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT" and the people pardoned "are subject to investigation at the highest level." The Constitution gives Presidents the right to issue pardons, but it does not give them the authority to revoke them. Furthermore, Trump's announcement was irrational even for him. Two months earlier, Trump himself pardoned the 1,600 terrorists who attacked Congress in January 2021. By Trump's logic, the next President could revoke those pardons and send those terrorists back to prison! The pardoning and un-pardoning would continue every time a new President was sworn in. It would never end.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama or Biden revoked pardons made by their predecessors, Congress would have immediately opened an investigation into their abuse of power. Though Trump's annoucenment that he was revoking Biden's pardons may not seem like it rises to the level of a "high crime" demanding impeachment, many of the people Biden pardoned were members of Congress and career public servants that Trump had threatened simply for doing their jobs. Biden pardoned them to prevent Trump from abusing the power of the government to go after innocent American citizens. If Trump follows through on his threat to investigate and prosecute innocent people, that will definitely be a high crime and an impeachable offense.

On the campaign trail, Trump made up an insane story about then-President Biden bringing "millions of... illegal aliens who are invading our country" and vowed to conduct "the largest deportation operation in American history." At one debate, Trump even claimed that the entire population of Venezuela had come to the United States. ("When you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly where it's I believe 21 million people, not the 15 that people say, and I think it's a lot higher than the 21." There are only 29 million people in all of Venezuela. If Trump's numbers had been accurate, every Venezuelan in the world would have moved here in under six weeks.)

While it's true that some migrants do cross the border without documentation looking for work and take minimum-wage jobs -- such as picking fruit or cleaning -- the overwhelming majority of migrants have nothing to do with drugs or crime. Moreover, the tens of millions Trump claims enter our country every month don't exist. Accoding to Politifact, there are probably around ten million undocumented immigrants in total in the entire United States.

Since Trump and his lackeys weren't able to find millions and millions of undocumented immigrants who don't exist, the xenophobe-in-chief decided to target legal immigrants as well. The DODO Trump Administration has taken to incarcerating and deporting law-abiding permanent residents. The procedure seems to be: (1) revoke a legal permanent resident's green card without cause, (2) don't inform them of their change in status, and (3) detain them for being in the country illegally when they had no idea they were supposed to leave. This mockery of justice has been used to turn hundreds -- of not thousands -- of innocent people into criminals when they committed no crimes. This violates Article I of the Constitution, which forbids Bills of Attainder (the government declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty without a trial) and the Ex Post Facto clause (detaining someone for an action that wasn't illegal when tney did it.) The DODO Trump Administration has also detained and/or deported refugees who have been granted asylum or protected status, immigrants with citizenship applications pending... and tourists. They have illegally detained American citizens by falsely accusing them to be illegal immigrants. In a few other cases, they illegally deported American children.

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador and fled to the United States seeking refuge from gang violence. According to The Atlantic, he has lived in the USA for over a decade, is married to an American citizen, and has no criminal record. The Huffington Post reported:

  "He had been arrested by ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] in a targeted operation in his home state of Maryland because he was accused, without evidence, of being a member of the gang MS-13 in 2019.
  "Abrego Garcia later challenged his detention, and the immigration judge found his testimony, including his refutation of gang affiliation, 'credible' and 'free of embellishment.' He was granted withholding removal status, which prevented him from being removed to El Salvador.
  "Abrego Garcia was removed along with over 250 Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants on three planes to CECOT on March 15.
  "Lawyers for the Department of Justice repeatedly admitted in court that Abrego Garcia had been wrongfully removed. But the administration has denied it has any power to effectuate his return."

  Abrego Garcia's lawyer told The Atlantic that "the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George’s County, Maryland. During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof and police said they didn’t believe him, filings show. Police did not identify him as a gang member."

  Like the other detainees listed below, Abrego Garcia abided by the law and never missed his annual check-in with ICE. He was detained because the Trump Administration claimed to have changed his protected status. It was the first time Abrego Garcia had heard of it.

  After his rendition, the DODO Trump Administration refused to obey a court order to bring Abrego Garcia back to Maryland, claiming that he is a terrorist -- a charge that has already been discredited. His lawyer told The Atlantic that “They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief. If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.” Trump later held up a photograph of Abrego Garcia that had been altered to make it look like he had gang-related tattoos. In other words, the President of the United States used an obvious forgery to fabricate evidence against an innocent person.

  The Trump Administration appealed to the Supreme Court -- who upheld the lower court's ruling. The DODO Trump Administration refused to obey the Supreme Court order for four months, claiming that Abrego Garcia was now in the custody of the Salvadoran government and there's nothing they could do. This is ludicrous, of course. A month earlier, the DODO Trump Administration successfully lobbied the Romanian government to allow Andrew Tate -- a Trump supporter and vocal misogynist -- to return to the United States. Tate and his brother were awaiting trial in Romania on sex trafficking charges.

  Trump later called for the judge who issued the original court order to be impeached. "Judge Boasberg is a Democrat activist," claimed Karoline Leavitt, Trump's DODO press secretary. "He was appointed by Barack Obama." While it's true that Obama promoted him, Leavitt was lying about Boasberg's political party. The judge is a Republican who was nominated by George W. Bush.

  According to Rolling Stone, Bukele -- who refers to himself as the "world's coolest dictator" -- refuses to return Abrego Garcia home, claiming "I don’t have the power to return him to the United States." The idea that a dictator is powerless to free an innocent man locked up in his own government's prison would be funny if we weren't talking about someone's real life. Trump later claimed "I could, I could" call Bukele and get Abrego Garcia back. If any other President in the last fifty years had incarcerated an innocent man without due process and then defied a court order to release him, that President would have been impeached immediately.

  The Atlantic pointed out:

  "This rhetorical game the [Trump] administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while [Salvadoran dictator] Bukele pretends he doesn't have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court -- and for the rule of law. The administration is maintaining that it has the power to send armed agents of the state to grab someone off the street and then, without a shred of due process, deport them to a Gulag in a foreign country and leave them there forever. The crucial point here is that the administration's logic means that it could do the same to American citizens -- after all, if deporting someone under a protective order to a Gulag without so much as a hearing is a "foreign policy" matter with which no court may interfere, then the citizenship of the condemned person doesn't matter.

  "The Trump administration's defiance of a Supreme Court order is a new step into presidential lawlessness, in that it suggests that the administration will not abide by any court orders it does not feel like complying with.

  "...If the evidence against these men were ironclad, the Trump administration would not need to violate the Constitution to put them in prison. The reason it is deporting people to an overseas Gulag is because it wants to look like it is being tough on criminals without having to investigate whether the people it is being tough on have committed any crimes.

  "What it could do to him, it could do to anyone. More significantly, if the Trump administration can defy court orders with impunity, and Congress is unwilling to act, there is no reason for it to respect the constitutional rights of American citizens either."

  Trump's DODO Attorney General, Pam Bondi, later cut funds for a program aiding victims of violent crime. Trump and Bondi also cancelled programs to help victims of trafficking, hate crimes, elder abuse, and hundreds of others. Programs to train prison guards and prevent overdoses were also cut. Trump and his DODO lackeys are more interested in locking up people who haven't committed any crimes than they are in helping people actually hurt by real criminals.

  Another Atlantic article examined Trump's tortured logic.

  "Trump, who has threatened the territorial integrity of multiple hemispheric neighbors, now claims that requesting the return of a prisoner he paid El Salvador to take would violate that country's sovereignty. Neither Trump nor Bukele bothered to make this absurd conceit appear plausible. Even as Trump and his officials claim that only El Salvador has the power to free wrongfully imprisoned American residents, the United States is paying El Salvador to hold the prisoners. (Naturally, Congress never appropriated such funds; Trump has already seized large swaths of Congress's constitutionally mandated spending power for himself.)

  "Trump can snatch prisoners and hand them to Bukele before the courts can act, and Bukele can ignore American court orders.

  "Trump has opened up a trapdoor beneath the American legal system. This trapdoor is wide enough to swallow the entire Constitution. So long as he can find at least one foreign strongman to cooperate, Trump can, if he wishes, imprison any dissident, judge, journalist, member of Congress, or candidate for office.

  "Asked if his deportation plan includes American citizens, [Trump] replied, 'Yeah, that includes them -- you think they're a special type of people or something?" He reaffirmed the position on Fox News the following day.

  "...It's important to understand that Trump habitually equates opposition, or any deviation from his goals, with illegality. He has labeled as criminals all three of his electoral opponents, a wide swath of media organizations, and many other people who made the mistake of publicly criticizing or disagreeing with him. Just days before his meeting with Bukele, he ordered the Justice Department to investigate the former cybersecurity official Chris Krebs for having 'falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.'"

  Mother Jones added: "Bukele is falsely stating that he cannot return Abrego Garcia to the United States. The Trump administration is falsely claiming that it cannot force Bukele's hand to release Abrego Garcia. The end result is that a man sent to one of the world's worst prisons by mistake, along with hundreds of Venezuelans also stuck there, have no clear path to getting out. The Trump administration has loudly claimed that the men sent to El Salvador are terrorists and criminals. But it has refused to provide evidence."

  As usual, Trump is talking nonsense. He's using taxpayer money to pay El Salvador to keep the prisoners there. Despite Bukele's claims, he'd return Abrego Garcia if Trump told him to. If Bukeke refused, all Trump would have to do is cut off funding for the prison.

  Trump later threatened legal action against advocates trying to get Abrego Garcia home. "Those lying to the American People on behalf of violent criminals have to be held responsible by the Agencies and the Courts," Trump wrote. Of course, Trump is himself guilty of lying on behalf of violent criminals. Not only have his own DODO lawyers admitted that Abrego Garcia is not a criminal and should not have been renditioned to a maximum security prison in a foreign country, Trump himself has spent years lying about the violent criminals who attacked Congress on January 6, 2021. Trump has also spent years defending war criminal Vladimir Putin.

  By Trump's logic, the Agencies and the Courts should take action against Vice President J.D. Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem! Vance and Noem lied to the American people when they falsely identified Abrego Garcia as a gang member.

  The Atlantic pointed out that the DODO Trump Administration publicly slanders immigrants -- legal residents as well as undocumented ones. In court, however, where DODO officials are required to tell the truth, they're telling a very different story. One Justice Department lawyer admitted under sworn testimony that Abrego Garica had been deported in error. Trump and his DODO aides, on the other hand, aren't under oath when they talk to the press, so they insist that there have been no errors and all the innocent people they deported -- including Abrego Garcia -- are terrorists. The attorney who told the truth under oath was later fired. (It's illegal to fire government employees for doing their jobs.)

  The Bill of Rights applies to everyone in American jurisdiction -- not just American citizens. The DODO Trump Administration illegally violated Abrego Garcia's Fifth Amendment rights by depriving him of liberty without due process of law, his Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments. The DODO Trump Administration also violated the Writ of Habeas Corpus by detaining him with no evidence that a crime had been committed and no proof that he was a suspect. Sign the petition demanding Abrego Garcia's release.

  After illegally confining Abrego Garcia for months in one of Latin America's most notorious prisons and claming there was no way to get him out, the DODO Trump Administration returned him to the United States -- just to imprison him again in Tennessee. The DODO Justice Department then indicted the person they claimed was a dangerous terrorist and gang member for... driving undocumented immigrants looking for work from Texas to other States. The evidence against him? Police pulled Abrego Garcia over in a routine traffic stop in 2019 and let him continue on his way. Since Trump, Bondi, Noem, and other DODO officials accidentally made Abrego Garcia famous, they're now determined to find something to imprison him for, despite the lack of evidence.

  Once back in the United States, Abrego Garcia told interviewers how he was tortured at CECOT. On the day he arrived, the guards beat him when he tried to stand up straight. While a prisoner, he was subject to further beatings, along with sleep and food deprivation. 80 prisoners had to share 2 toilets. At the prison, lights are never turned off, and there are no fans, windows, or air conditioning. On one occasion he and other prisoners were forced to kneel all night with no bathroom access, and the guards beat anyone who collapsed from exhaustion. The actual criminals imprisoned there often got in fights, and the guards didn't intervene. What's more, the prison guards there knew perfectly well Abrego Garcia wasn't a gang member and did nothing about it.

  In July, the Venezuelan and Salvadoran governments made a deal to return some of the Venezuelan-born CECOT detainees to the country of their birth. Once released, the Venezuelans told horrific stories about the conditions in the prison. One of them was Arturo Suarez. He told reporters: "We spent four months without any contact with the outside world. We were kidnapped. We got a beating for breakfast. We got a beating for lunch. We got a beating for dinner."

• The DODO Trump Administration deported hundreds of other immigrants to CECOT prison in El Salvador at the same time as Abrego Garcia without due process, regardless of whether the detainees were from El Salvador or not. 238 of them were born in Venezuela, and the DODO Trump Administration claimed the Venezuelans are members of a criminal gang. Apparently, the DODO Administration believes anyone born in Venezuela who has a tattoo must be a member of the gang. Experts have refuted that, pointing out that "Tattoos aren't an identifier" that gang uses.

  As noted above, Judge Boasberg ruled that sending immigrants to prison in another country was illegal. At the time of the ruling, two planes were already in the air, and the judge ordered the planes to be turned around and the immigrants returned to the United States. Trump refused -- violating the court order. The DODO Trump Administration appealed the ruling, arguing that the immigrants were members of a Venezuelan gang so deadly that most Americans had never heard of it before.

  When arriving in El Salvador, the detainees' heads were shaved, and they were thrown in crowded cells in the CECOT mega-prison. According to the Associated Press, CECOT's cells hold 65-70 prisoners each. The prisoners are never allowed to leave the building or receive visitors. 261 people have died there since the prison was opened in 2022. Human rights advocates have reported torture and medical neglect.

  Sending legal residents -- or anyone -- to a foreign prison famous for torture violates the Eighth Amendment, banning the use of "cruel and unusual punishments." It's also illegal for anyone -- including members of the Executive Branch -- to violate a court order.

  According to The Atlantic, of the "men sent to CECOT, 90 percent of whom lack a criminal record, and 100 percent of whom were deported without due process."

  Trump's drive to send people to CECOT won't end with legal residents. Trump says himself that he would like to send American citizens there -- such as those who have vandalized Teslas. "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions," Trump wrote. The President of the United States cannot tell the difference between criminal mischief-makers who vandalize cars and "sick terrorist thugs."

  Vandalizing someone else's property is a crime. Though Elon Musk must answer for his illegal acts, vandalizing something that does not belong to you is not the solution. Those who disagree with Musk must do so peacefully. No one can champion the rule of law by committing crimes.

  Trump later told the Salvadoran dictator that he wants to send American citizens to prison there as well. "The homegrowns are next. You've gotta build about five more places." A few months later he reiterated that goal. "Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that will be the next job... if we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat." It's illegal to deport American citizens.

  As with Abrego Garcia, the DODO Trump Administration violated the detainees' Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Sign the petition to stop the renditions to El Salvador, and tell the Senate to investigate at Demand Progress and Win Without War.

• An Afghan soldier whose name has not been revealed fought for the United States during the War in Afghanistan. He is on record saving an American soldier's life. When the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan in 2021, he was one of 20,000 American allies who were evacuated to the United States by the US military. His asylum application is in progress.

  In May, ICE arrested him at his home in Houston. He has eight children, two of whom are American citizens. He entered this country legally and has never committed a crime. ICE violated his Fourth Amendment rights (against unreasonable seizures), his Fifth Amendment rights (against being deprived of liberty without due process), his Sixth Amendment rights (to be informed of the charges agaisnt him), his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Muhanad Alshrouf applied for a visa to enter the United States to join his father, an American citizen. He received one -- and then was detained when his plane landed in Houston. He was released after nine days, and was never told why he was detained in the first place. "Muhanad has no criminal history anywhere in the world," his lawyer said. CBP violated Alshrouf's Fourth Amendment right against detention without probable cause and his Sixth Amendment right to know the accusations against him. CBP told Houston Public Media that "a visa does not guarantee entry into the U.S." In other words, just because you complied with the law, did everything right, and we told you that you could come to the United States doesn't mean we'll actually let you do it.

• The DODO Trump Administration deported Dr. Rasha Alawieh, who had a valid visa and teaches medicine at Brown University. She was arrested at Boston's Logan Airport after returning to visit family in Lebanon and deported to Paris. (!) A judge issued an order against ICE deporting her without due process, but the DODO Trump Administration claimed that the officers who deported Dr. Alawieh hadn't gotten the memo. ICE illegally violated Dr. Alawieh's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Elsie Barios fled her native El Salvador for the United States in 2017. Though she's an undocumented immigrant, she has since applied for asylum. In March, Barios and her daughter were driving to work in Maryland when they were pulled over by masked ICE agents. When they ordered her to get out of the car, Barios asked to see their warrant. The masked agents didn't have one, so they smashed her car window and dragged Barios away. She is currently in prison in Maryland. ICE subsequently told her lawyer -- with no evidence -- that the 51-year-old mother was a member of a Salvadoran gang.

  Detaining someone without a warrant is kidnapping and false imprisonment. No one -- not ICE, not the President, not people who vandalize Tesla dealerships -- can uphold the law by committing crimes. By kidnapping and disappearing Barios, ICE illegally violated her Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable seizures; her Fifth Amendment right to due process; her Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the charges against her; her Sixth Amendment right to see the witnesses against her; his Sixth Amendment right to a trial; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus, requiring proof that a crime was committed and that the person in custody is in fact the suspect. The ICE agents who disappeared Barios must be fired and charged with her kidnapping.

• Narciso Barranco, a gardener, was tackled at work, beaten, and dragged away by four masked border patrol agents in June. He was pepper-sprayed and his shoulder dislocated. Barranco was in the process of applying for citizenship, and all three of his sons are in the Marines. His son told an interviewer: "I don't think it was just, I don't think it was fair. I don’t think they need four 200 [pound]-plus guys to hold down a 5'6" or 5'7", 150-pound guy... I do believe my father was racially profiled; they didn't ask him anything."

  ICE violated Barranco's Fourth Amendment right to be secure in his person against unreasonable seizures, his Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the charges against him, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel punishment, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Emanuelly Borges Santos, 2, is a U.S. Citizen born in Florida. Her parents, though undocumented, fled violence in their native Brazil and applied for asylum here. In February, the toddler was deported to Brazil along with her parents. It's illegal to deport American citizens to other countries. The toddler is not a Brazilian citizen, and was forced to enter her parents' native country on a tourist visa.

• According to the American Civil Liberties Union, ICE "disappeared" 48 New Mexico residents. ICE "has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them... When the government takes people into custody and then their whereabouts are unknown and they are unreachable, it places these individuals outside the protection of the law... Families are left in agonizing uncertainty, desperate to contact their loved ones and ensure their safety. Enforced disappearances are prohibited by both our Constitution and international human rights standards."

  "When I was detained, my family had no idea where I was for days," said Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo, who was formerly detained at ICE’s Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico. "That feeling of being erased from the world — it’s terrifying. These 48 people and their families are going through that right now. No one should face this kind of treatment in America."

• Paola Clouatre is married to a veteran of the U.S. Marines. She immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 2014 and has been married to her U.S. citizen husband for three years. They have a one-year-old son and a two-month-old baby. Paola was in the process of applying for permanent legal residence and was arrested after a routine interview in May. Her husband has been driving a seven-hour round trip each day so Paula can nurse their baby. She has been in detention for weeks even though she's never committed any crimes. Apparently, some bureaucrat ordered her returned to Mexico in 2018, but she was never informed of this. Her husband says she's sitting in a cell with the lights on 21 hours every day. ICE violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures; her Fifth Amendment right to due process; her Sixth Amendment rights to be notified of the accusations against her; his Sixth Amendment right to a trial; the Writ of Habeas Corpus; and the Bill of Attainder clause.

• Emerson Colindres, 19, came to the United States with his mother as a child. In June, he went to a routine check-in -- obeying the law to the letter. At the meeting, he was handcuffed, spent two weeks in jail, then deported alone to Honduras -- a country he hasn't seen for a decade. Colindres is a star athlete who never committed any crimes. ICE violated Colindres' Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures, his Fifth Amendment right to due process, his Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the charges against him, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Shirly Guardado Correa is married to a U.S. Army sergeant. Shirly was in the process of applying for citizenship, and the couple has a baby son together. In March, Sergeant Ayssac Correa got a frantic phone call, telling him that ICE had arrested his wife. By the time Sergeant Correa got to his wife's place of employment, she had already been sent to prison and he had no way of finding out where she was. She was finally able to call him after three days. Though they thought she would be released soon, she spent three months in prison and then was deported to Honduras. (Though Shirly was born in Honduras, she has no family or friends there and no place to stay.) The Correa family did everything correctly: she entered the country legally, applied for citizenship, got married, and properly applied for the right of a military spouse to stay in the country while her citizenship application was processed. Ayssac has requested transfer to a U.S. military base in Honduras. If his transfer is not approved, he will be forced to resign from the military, sell his possessions, and move to Honduras to keep his family together. ICE violated Correa's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures, her Fifth Amendment right to due process, her Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the charges against her, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

  The same thing is happening to Alejandra Juarez. Juarez is married to a Marine veteran and was initially deported to Mexico in 2017, leaving her husband behind with their two children. She was legally allowed to return in 2021, but she's now been told to leave the United States again by July 4.

• Caroline Dias Goncalves, 19, is a student at the University of Utah. She was pulled over for a routine traffic stop and released with a warning. However, ICE showed up a few minutes later, arrested her without a warrant, and confined her in a Colorado prison. Though Dias Goncalves was born in Brazil, she came to the United States when she was 7 and her family has applied for asylum here. She's never committed a crime. ICE violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures, her Fifth Amendment right to due process, her Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the charges against her, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The officials who disappeared Dias Goncalves without a warrant must be fired and charged with false arrest (detaining someone with neither a warrant nor probable cause) and false imprisonment.

  The same thing happened to Ximena Arias-Cristobal, another 19-year-old in Georgia. Arias-Cristobal has since been released; Dias Goncalves is still incarcerated without charges.

• Martin Diaz's Mexican parents brought him to the United States in 1991 when he was a toddler. He's married to an American citizen and was in the process of applying for legal residence. He was tackled, arrested, and detained on his way to work in May. As of this writing he's in solitary confinement. ICE violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures, his Fifth Amendment right to due process, his Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the charges against him, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, his Eighth Amendment right to ber free from cruel punishment, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Lewelyn Dixon immigrated to the United States fifty years ago from the Philippines and is a legal permanent resident. She was detained at an airport in February after returning from a vacation abroad. Her family had no idea why she has been imprisoned. ICE violated Dixon's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures; her Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of her freedom without due process; her Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the charges against her; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

  Dixon was finally released in June after three months in a crowded prison. She was never informed why she was detained in the first place.

• Kasper Eriksen legally moved to the United States from Denmark twelve years ago, married an American citizen, had four children, and is in the process of applying for citizenship. At his citizenship interview in April, he was detained -- because of a missing document dating from his 2015 marriage. He is currently in prison in Louisiana. (The prison - LaSalle Detention Facility - has been accused of neglecting detainees' medical needs.) This is certainly a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Detaining an innocent person because of a missing form from ten years ago certainly constitutes an unreasonable seizure. As commentator Keith Olbermann said, "you show up for your court date in good faith seeking to become a citizen of this country, legally obeying the law, only to [be] detained. The lawyer you came with cannot see you. The hearing you were at is not succeeded by a different hearing. All you get is a seat on a plane headed for a country literally in the middle of a civil war, like South Sudan or Burma or even Libya -- taking people who thought they were going in and doing the right thing and sending them to hell... for doing the right thing."

  Though Eriksen is not one of the legal permanent residents renditioned to prison in El Salvador, many others have. Even though a court order forbade the DODO Trump Administration from renditioning anyone to other countries with no due process, Trump has been doing it anyway, and to nations other than El Salvador. "A woman... reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa." These Asian immigrants -- from Myanmar (a country east of India) and Vietnam (a country south of China) were apparently sent to South Sudan, a war-torn country in Africa. A judge quickly ruled that the deportees must remain in American custody. (South Sudan later denied any deportees had arrived in their country. This raised concerns that the deportees were sent to Libya instead -- a different war-torn country in another part of Africa.)

• Roseani Ferreira de Oliveira is a Brazilian-born mother living in Worcester, Massachusetts. In a terrifying chain of events, ICE agents -- acting without a warrant -- attempted to disappear her outside her home in May. Ferreira's two daughters came to her rescue, one of whom was holding Ferreira's three-month-old grandson. Neighbors rallied around Ferreira, trying to prevent the kidnapping, and formed a human chain in an attempt to prevent the ICE officers from taking her away. Worchester police eventually showed up, but told the crowd they were powerless to stop the kidnapping because the kidnappers worked for the federal government. Though Worcester Police later told the press that the police had been attempting to de-escalate the situation, that's not what the video footage shows. According to the videos, three burly police officers wrestled one of Ferreira's teenage daughters to the ground and charged her with endangering a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. This is absurd. Under criminal law, coming to the aid of a kidnapping victim is self-defense.

  By kidnapping Ferreira without a warrant, ICE illegally violated her Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable seizures, her Fifth Amendment right to due process, her Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the charges against her, her Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Worchester must immediately drop all charges against the people who came to Ferreira's defense. Moreover, the ICE agents who disappeared Ferreira must be fired and charged with her kidnapping, and the Worcester police officers who stood by and did nothing as ICE agents illegally abducted someone must be fired.

• Sara Lopez Garcia is an honor student, a tour guide, and volunteer. Though she came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant when she was a minor, she has complied with the law and applied for permanent legal residence. She and her mother were granted legal work permits. ICE detained her and her mother a day before Lopez Garcia was due to graduate from college and a few weeks before her wedding. They are currently in detention in Louisiana and are scheduled to be deported to Colombia. By detaining an innocent person who committed no crimes, ICE violated her Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in her home against unreasonable seizures; her Fifth Amendment right to due process; her Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the accusations against her; her Sixth Amendment right to a trial; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Agustin Gentile is a legal permanent resident with a green card. His parents are American citizens, and brought Gentile to the United States when he was a toddler. Now 31, Gentile is married and has two childen who are also American citizens. Gentile was detained at an airport after returning from a trip abroad, and his Argentine passport and green card were confiscated. He is currently in detention in Georgia. According to his parents -- who voted for Trump -- Gentile has been detained because ICE falsely claimed he'd spent two years in prison. In reality, he'd been jailed in 2020 for two days. ICE violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process.

• Marco Gomes de Silva is a junior in high school. He came to the United States legally when he was 7, and was detained by ICE one Saturday morning in June on the way to volleyball practice. An ICE agent walked up to his car, asked for his documents, then handcuffed him, telling Gomes he was an illegal immigrant. Gomes had no idea. He was detained for six days, and it turned out that ICE didn't have a warrant for him -- he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. While in detention, he wasn't allowed to go outside, and was forced to sleep on a concrete floor.

  The town rallied around him. He was still in detention on graduation day -- he was supposed to play in the band -- and, after the ceremony, the high school students walked to the town hall and protested. Trump "pardons cop-beaters from Jan 6 but detains high-school volleyball players," said Congressman Jake Auchincloss, who attended the rally. ICE violated Gomes' Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Jose Hermosillo is a 19-year-old American citizen from New Mexico. He was illegally detained by immigration authorities while visiting friends in Arizona and sent to prison for ten days by immigration authorities who falsely accused him of being an undocumented immigrant. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States, and arresting him was illegal. The Homeland Security Department later released a transcript of Hermosillo "confessing" that he was a Mexican citizen and had entered the US illegally. None of that is true, and Hermosillo claims he never said any of those things.

  According to Mother Jones, Hermosillo said he was detained with about 15 other men in a cell at the Florence Correctional Center. He was served only cold food. He said he contracted the flu because “they have it cold in there and everybody’s getting sick.” Hermosillo said he requested medicine but was not provided with any. ICE illegally violated Hermosillo's Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The ICE agents who detained and imprisoned an American citizen inside the United States with no charges must be fired and prosecuted for false arrest and false imprisonment.

  Hermosillo is not the only innocent person held in disgusting, inhumane conditions. One woman who contacted NPR says her brother is in custody at a detainment center in Florida. He has a fever and an eye infection and has been denied medical care. An attorney with a client at the same prison says the detainees are starving: they are given one cup of rice and one cup of water per day, and that's their only food. They are forced to sleep on the floor. Another person whose spouse has been detained says the food they're served is rotten.

• Andry Hernandez Romero is a stage actor who fled his native Venezuela to escape anti-LGBT harassment. He applied for asylum upon reaching the United States, but was arrested instead and then renditioned to CECOT prison in El Salvador. ICE falsely claimed his tattoos showed gang membership. ICE illegally violated Hernandez' Fifth Amendment right to due process, his Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the charges against him, his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• David Huerta is an American citizen and the leader of a Calfornia janitors' union. In June, he was arrested outside a warehouse during an ICE raid. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States, and it was illegal for them to arrest him. Though he has been released, he is being charged with impeding a federal agent -- charges that the video does not appear to support. Unlike the other people on this list, Huerta will have his day in court. The ICE agents who arrested him must be fired and prosecuted.

• Ribvar Karimi is an Iranian immigrant who fell in love with an Alabama woman. He moved to the United States to marry her, and his wife is seven months pregnant. Karimi was arrested by ICE in June -- because he had once served in the Iranian army fighting DAESH terrorists. All Iranian men are required by Iranian law to serve in the military. Both Karimi and his wife are Trump supporters. His wife says that if Karimi is deported back to Iran, the Iranian government may execute him for treason for his outspoken support for the United States. ICE violated Karimi's Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable seizures and his Sixth Amendment right to a trial.

• Mahmoud Khalil -- a Palestinian immigrant with a green card who just graduated from Columbia -- was detained by Homeland Security in March and spent four months in the Louisiana prison.

  When ICE showed up at Khalil's apartment to detain him, they also threatened to arrest his wife -- an American citizen who was eight months pregnant. (She has since given birth with her husband incarcerated.) They told Khalil that his student visa had been revoked. Khalil managed to get his lawyer on the phone, and she told the ICE agents that Khalil was a permanent resident with a green card. The ICE agent then said they were revoking that instead. Khalil had no idea his green card was being revoked until ICE showed up at his front door -- and the ICE agents didn't know this either.

  Khalil has never committed a crime and has not been charged with one. The DODO Trump Administration apparently targeted Khalil for criticizing a foreign country during a student protest. Khalil later told the Associated Press that "I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with."

  The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to everyone in America. The DODO Trump Administration illegally violated Khalil's First Amendment right to free speech, his Fourth Amendment right to be secure in his person and his home from unreasonable seizures, his Fifth Amendment right to due process, his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him, and the Bill of Attainder clause. Whether you agree with Khalil's politics or not, if the government can arrest an innocent person without charges and imprison them forever, they can do this to American citizens as well as legal residents. A judge finally ordered Khalil released after four months in prison. The agents who detained Khalil must be fired, and the agent (or agents) who threatened his wife must be prosecuted. (It's illegal to threaten someone under New York law.)

• Chris Landry is a legal permanent resident of the United States and a citizen of Canada. He's a Trump supporter and has lived in New Hampshire since he was 3. In July, Landry was returning home from a routine trip to Canada when he was stopped at the border and denied entry. He was told his green card had been revoked without his knowledge, and was told he would be arrested if he tried to return to his home and his family. The reason? He was convicted of doing marijuana 18 years ago. He served his sentence and has not been any legal trouble since. Though Landry should not have done drugs, it's a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights to punish him a second time for a crime he was already punished for over a decade ago. Also: revoking Landry's green card without a hearing violates the Constitution's Bill of Attainder clause.

• Juan Lopez-Gomez is an American citizen who was born in Georgia. In April, he was driving in Florida on his way to work when he was arrested for being an illegal alien. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. Even though he produced his birth certificate and a judge confirmed that there was no cause to detain him, he was still kept in prison for over 24 hours. The DODO Trump Administration illegally violated his Sixth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus by not releasing him as soon as he produced his birth certificate. The officials who detained him -- and any officials who did not immediately release him when they saw his birth certificate and realized they had detained an innocent man -- must be fired and prosecuted for kidnapping and false imprisonment.

• Brad Lander is an attorney and American citizen serving as the Comptroller of New York City. In June, he was escorting a defendant out of immigration court when he was abducted by masked ICE agents. ICE ignored his demands to see a warrant and later said he had been detained for "impeding" and "assaulting" federal agents. Watch the video -- this is clearly not what happened. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States, and working for the Federal government does not give people carte blanche to put on masks and disappear innocent people without a warrant. Lander was held for four hours before he was released, and was never told why he was being detained. He pointed out that he's free to go home -- but the illegally detained immigrants he met while in custody are not. ICE violated Lander's Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable seizures, his Sixth Amendment right to be made aware of the charges against him, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. If ICE can do this to a New York City elected official, they can do it to anyone. They can do it to you. The ICE agents who abducted and detained Lander must be fired and charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment.

• Jensy Machado, an American citizen who voted for Trump, was intercepted by ICE, handcuffed, and interrogated while on his way to work in March. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. Though ICE let him go, they detained the two people with him. ICE is "just following Hispanic people," Machado said.

  The same thing happened to a U.S. Marshal in May. ICE detained him while he was walking into a Federal building in Arizona.

• Marisa and her family are American citizens who live in Oklahoma City. In late March, 20 ICE agents broke into their home in the middle of the night and forced her and her three daughters -- at gunpoint -- out into the rain in their underwear. The agents then ransacked the house and seized their phones, laptops, and all the cash they had in the house. ICE had a warrant, but that warrant referred to the house's previous owners. Marisa and her family have nothing to do with them. At this writing the family's money and possessions have not been returned.

  The ICE officers should have ended the raid and apologized as soon as they realized the people they wanted no longer lived there. Instead, they violated the family's Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in their persons and houses from unreasonable searches and seizures, and their Fifth Amendment rights not to be deprived of their property without due process. The family's possessions must be returned immediately, and all the officers involved in this fiasco must be fired, arrested, and charged with breaking and entering, false imprisonment, and armed robbery.

• Adrian Martinez is a U.S. citizen. In June, he was at lunch when he saw a janitor fleeing in terror from a masked gunman. He joined a crowd of people who came to the janitor's defense. The ICE agents then pushed Martinez to the ground, injuring his leg, and arrested him. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. Martinez was released, but was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. There was no conspiracy -- he'd never met the janitor before, and his decision to help the man was spur-of-the-moment. Moreover, the masked gunman wasn't wearing a uniform, and Martinez had no way of knowing the gunman was an ICE agent and not a gangster.

• Mohsen Mahdawi has been legal permanent resident of the United States for the last eleven years and has applied for citizenship. ICE arrested him when he arrived for his citizenship interview! He was imprisoned for over two weeks when a judge ordered his release. By detaining him with no charges and with no crime, ICE violated Mahdawi's First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Iris Monterroso-Lemus, a pregnant woman, was arrested in mid-March by local police in Tennessee for missing a court date. Though her partner posted bail, instead of being released she was handed over to ICE. She was sent to a prison in Tennessee, then one in Alabama, then one in Louisiana. According to the International Business Times, "she was kept in poor living conditions and claims she was constantly hungry. Meals were often inedible, sometimes infested with cockroaches." As her pregnancy progressed, she asked for medical help, but was ignored. After weeks of medical neglect, "she was taken to hospital and gave birth to a stillborn baby on 29 April while under armed guard." She was deported to Guatemala a few days later.

  Ironically, abortion is illegal in all three of those States, and had Monterroso-Lemus tried to terminate her pregnancy voluntarily she would have been barred from doing so. Moreover, Alabama has a fetal personhood law that declares an unborn fetus a person and has prosecuted pregnant women who gave birth to stillborn babies -- so the ICE agents who denied Monterroso-Lemus medical care when her unborn child was dying could be guilty of criminally negligent homicide. ICE violated Monterroso-Lemus' Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, as well as her Fifth Amendment right to due process and her Sixth Amendment right to a trial.

• Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian actress, was illegally detained by ICE when returning to California from a trip to Mexico. Even though immigration officials agreed that she was not a criminal, and told her so in so many words, they sent her to prison without charging her with anything. "One minute," she wrote,

  "I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an ICE detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.

  "I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.

  "For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions. No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didn't trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldn't be there long."

  On the third day, "They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for re-entry through the consulate. The officer also said it didn't matter whether I signed the papers or not; it was happening regardless.

  "I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave.

  "No answer.

  "Then they moved me to another cell -- this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. That's when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

  "I was told to shower, given a jail uniform, fingerprinted and interviewed. I begged for information. 'How long will I be here?'

  "'I don't know your case,' the man said. Could be days. Could be weeks. But I'm telling you right now -- you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.' "I felt like I was going to throw up."

  After a few days in the prison, she started talking to the guards and detainees. One of the guards told her not to get in a fight. She asked if there'd ever been a fight there, and he said no. "No one in this unit has a criminal record," he told her.

  "I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn't have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.

  "I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.

  "Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn't had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?

  "There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master's degree and was handed over to ICE due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.

  "There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman's daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release."

  After a few days, Mooney was sent to another prison in Arizona.

  "The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, grueling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together - women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle."

  The Arizona prison was worse. "There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasn't enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.

  "Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal... I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had men's shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldn't give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7."

  Mooney was eventually able to contact some friends outside the prison, who went to the media. When the story went viral -- an innocent Canadian actress with all her paperwork in order had been deprived of her liberty without charges or due process -- she was released.

  "I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks. Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.

  "ICE detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit... The more detainees, the more money they make."

  The DODO Trump Administration illegally violated Mooney's Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. It likely violated the same Constitutional rights of everyone Mooney met in the detention facilities. Everyone involved in this -- from the ICE agents who detained someone they knew was innocent to the prison officials and guards who knew they had an innocent woman in their custody -- must be fired and prosecuted for false arrest and false imprisonment.

• A 24-year-old staffer working for Congressman Jerry Nadler was shocked when DODO Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers arrived at the Congressman's office and accused the staff of harboring rioters. There had been no riot, and there were no rioters. One officer handcuffed the staffer as a second officer told the staff that they didn't need a warrant. As the terrified staffer broke down in tears, the officer told her "Do not resist. Stop resisting." Parts of the incident were captured on video.

  DHS later released a statement claiming "Officers identified themselves and explained their intent to conduct a security check, however, one individual became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office." Nadler's chief of staff later told the press: "DHS's statement that they were coming in for a safety check doesn't mesh with the video." Nadler himself wrote: "The decision to enter a Congressional office and detain a staff member demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries. If this can happen in a Member of Congress's office, it can happen to anyone -- and is happening."

  The DHS officers violated the staffer's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. The DODO officers fabricated the "riot" excuse to justify handcuffing one of the innocent American citizens they're supposed to be protecting. All the officials who went to Nadler's office and handcuffed an innocent woman -- or watched it happen and did nothing -- must be fired and prosecuted for false imprisonment.

• O.C.G. is a refugee who fled violence in his native Guatemala. During his journey through Mexico he was attacked, kidnapped, and beaten by criminals. When he finally arrived in the United States and requested asylum, ICE sent him back to Mexico. ICE admitted this was a mistake and blames a "software error."

• Cynthia Olivera and her husband Francisco are longtime Trump supporters. According to the Huffington Post, "The 45-year-old [Cynthia] Olivera was born in Canada and entered the U.S. illegally with her parents when she was 10 years old. About nine years after her arrival, immigration officials in Buffalo, New York, determined she’d been living in the U.S. without legal status and deported her. She later returned to the U.S. by driving across the California border from Mexico."

  She's spent the last 25 years living and working in Los Angeles and has applied for legal permanent residence. She was expecting to have her residence approved at her final interview in June, but instead, ICE showed up and detained her. She has been in prison ever since. Her husband has been trying to get her out of prison and buy her a plane ticket to Canada -- all to no avail. "The only crime I committed is to love this country and to work hard and to provide for my kids," she said.

  Cynthia entered the United States without the proper documentation over two decades ago when she was a teenager, but she has complied with the law ever since. ICE violated her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures and her Sixth Amendment right to a trial.

• According to the Huffington Post, "On March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and Fulbright scholar working on her Ph.D., was detained on a Massachusetts street by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after her visa was abruptly revoked."

  According to Slate, her detention was caught on camera.

  "A man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap crossed the street toward her. Chilling surveillance footage shows the moment he approaches: “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says politely, his tone disarming. Ozturk hesitates and tries to sidestep him. Another man in plainclothes appears across the street. One reaches for a radio. The other moves in.

  "One of the men goes for her phone. The other grabs at her hands. Ozturk screams. Shock and fear ripple through her voice. Two masked women join them, tugging at her backpack, peeling the straps from her shoulders. “I’m going somewhere, I need to call someone,” she pleads. “We’re the police. Relax,” one of the men says in response.

  They surround her. Then, one by one, they pull their neck gaiters up to cover their faces. “You don’t look like police,” a voice off screen says. “Why are you hiding your faces?” The questions continue, but the figures don’t respond. Instead, they cuff Ozturk, cross the street, and put her in an unmarked SUV. She is gone.

  "The video is haunting. You can see Ozturk’s panic set in, and the clear impunity the agents feel in taking her and vanishing with no explanation. Just days after the Trump administration successfully pressured Columbia University to ban masks at campus demonstrations, these agents concealed their identities and arrived in an unmarked vehicle, asserting only that they were the authorities, period."

  After her abduction, Ozturk was then moved to the LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. Ozturk has a valid student visa and was detained without charges. Though a Homeland Security spokesperson later accused Ozturk of supporting Hamas -- a Mideastern terrorist group -- neither Homeland Security nor ICE has any records of Ozturk commiting any crimes, supporting any terrorists, sympathizing with Hamas, or even being rude. According to her attorneys, she was targeted for the same reason as Khalil -- for criticizing a foreign country. This violates the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech to anyone in American jurisdiction.

  Ozturk has asthma, and had twelve asthma attacks while imprisoned. “The air is full of fumes from cleaning supplies and is damp which triggers my asthma. We don’t get much fresh air which also impacts my ability to breathe well. The conditions in the facility are very unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane. There is a mouse in our cell. The boxes they provide for our clothing are very dirty and they don’t give us adequate hygiene supplies.”

  Mother Jones reported that Ozturk was denied access to her inhaler.

  Ozturk will not be the last. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's revoked "more than 300" student visas, calling these non-violent legal residents "lunatics," even though none of them has committed a crime. "We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa." This violates the Constitution's Bill of Attainder clause. (A judge later ordered ICE to reinstate the visas of 133 students whose visas had been revoked, but at this writing over 1,500 students have had their visas cancelled.)

  A judge ordered Ozturk's release after she spent six weeks in prison with no charges.

  The DODO Trump Administration illegally violated Ozturk's First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights. Sign the petition demanding an investigation into her kidnapping and the petition demanding the release of the other students. The ICE agents who disappeared her off the street must be fired and prosecuted for kidnapping.

• Sae Joon Park has lived in the United States for 48 years and served in the U.S. Army, where he was shot in combat and received a Purple Heart. In June, ICE ordered him to leave the United States for his birth country of South Korea. Though Park did get in legal trouble for using drugs fourteen years ago, his drug use stems from his battle injury. He subsequently overcame his problems and has been clean for years.

  Though Park obviously should not have done drugs, it isn't justice to punish a veteran a second time for the same crime after he completed his sentence over a decade ago. ICE violated Park's Fifth Amendment rights by punishing him twice for the same offense.

• Isidro Perez, 75, was arrested in early June, and died three weeks later while detained at an ICE prison in Florida. According to the Miami Herald, Perez was in ill health and could barely walk. Even though ICE prison officials knew Perez was sick, he was forced to sleep on the floor in an overcrowded detention center.

  Perez legally immigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1966 and was a legal resident ever since. He was convicted of drug possession in the early 1980's and served his sentence. He subsequently turned his life around.

  Like Park, Perez should not have done drugs. However, it's a violation of the Fifth Amendment to punish a someone a second time for the same crime after he completed his sentence forty years ago. According to CBS, Perez is one of a dozen people (so far) to die in ICE custody.

  Perez was not charged, tried, or convicted of a capital crime, and he certainly wasn't condemned to death. ICE violated his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of his life without due process. Though Perez was in failing health, he would probably still be alive if he hadn't been illegally detained. The ICE agents who knowingly imprisoned a sick man and denied him medical care must be charged with criminally negligent homicide.

• Kseniia Petrova is a Russian scientist who had to flee her homeland after protesting Putin's invasion of Ukraine. She got a job doing research at Harvard -- but was detained at Boston's Logan Airport when returning from Paris in mid-February on a work-related trip. Her visa was revoked on the spot and she was sent to a jail in Vermont. After a week there, she was sent to the LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. Though she made a minor mistake filling out her customs declaration, she was never charged with a crime. Those mistakes usually result in a $500 fine -- not prison. Speaking to an interviewer from inside the prison, Petrova told him: "It's 90 women in one room. And the room is, of course, not supposed to keep 90 women... almost all the space of the room is occupied by beds, which are staying really very close to each other. There is not any privacy here. Our bathroom space with shower and toilets is also in our room. It is always very cold inside. They're keeping temperature low."

  By keeping Petrova in prison without trial, ICE illegally violated her Sixth Amendment rights. After four months in prison, a judge finally ordered her release in June.

• YouTuber Hasan Piker -- an American citizen born in the United States -- was detained by DODO customs officials when returning from a trip to France. He was released after several hours, but the detention was illegal for two reasons. First, an innocent American citizen was detained at all -- violating his Fourth Amendment rights (the right to be free from unreasonable seizures), his Sixth Amendment rights (the right to be notified of the charges against him), and the Writ of Habeas Corpus (the government's duty to prove a crime was committed before detaining someone.) Second: during Piker's detention, customs officials grilled him on his opinion of Trump. Whether you agree with Piker's opinions or not, Piker's political beliefs are protected by the First Amendment. He has the right to freedom of speech. "They tried to straight-up get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently," Piker later said. "I saw no reason to hold back on certain things, so I said, 'I don't like Trump. What are you going to do? It's protected by the First Amendment.' ... The reason for why they're doing that is, I think, to try to create an environment of fear."

  The same thing happened to Amir Makled, a lawyer representing a student protester.

• According to the Los Angeles Times,

  Heidi Plummer, a U.S. citizen and Orange County attorney, strolled through Centennial Regional Park in Santa Ana on June 14 to clear her mind after a family funeral when she suddenly encountered an immigration raid.

  Plummer recounted seeing several vans pull into a big parking lot near where she walked, sometime between noon and 1 p.m. Masked federal agents poured out of the vans wearing tactical gear emblazoned with “ICE” and made their way through the park.

  “They were just grabbing people that were close to them and handcuffing them,” Plummer said. She stood only a few feet from the sweep, she said, when ICE agents approached and arrested her. Plummer said the federal agents didn’t ask any questions before taking her personal belongings and leading her back to their vans.

  Plummer, who is half-Ecuadorian, began advising people of their rights after agents handcuffed her. In Spanish, she told those arrested by ICE not to answer any questions and to ask for a lawyer.

  Her advice continued after vans transported Plummer and other detainees to an ICE detention facility in Santa Ana. Agents had separated men from women in different vans. Plummer said that at the center she was held in a room without enough chairs for all the women detained. Agents called detainees up one by one.

  Plummer said she provided authorities with her identification. After about an hour-and-a-half, they returned her ID, cellphone and released her.

  When finally reached for comment, a spokesperson for ICE refuted Plummers’ account.

  “ICE was not at that park that day, nor did they make any arrests there,” the spokesperson said. “There is no record backing her claims.”

  Rivera [Plummer's lawyer] invited the U.S. Department of Justice and federal immigration agencies to provide him with information to help determine who the individuals were, if not ICE as claimed.

  If the masked agents wearing ICE vests who took Plummer to an ICE detention facility weren't ICE, then who were they? If they were common criminals, why did they take her to an ICE detention facility along with all the other detainees? Why didn't the real ICE arrest them when they got there?

  ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. ICE violated Plummer's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures, her Fifth Amendment rights to due process; her Sixth Amendment rights to be informed of the accusations against her; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The agents who detained her must be fired and prosecuted for false arrest (i.e. detaining someone with neither a warrant nor probable cause.)

• Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, are German tourists who were detained in Hawaii. According to the Daily Beast, they "arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey." Even though they had valid ESTA tourist documents, they were strip-searched and forced into prison garb. "They were then placed in a holding facility with serious criminals, including an alleged murderer who had been locked up for 18 years, and were forced to spend the night in a freezing cold double cell." They were then put on a flight to Tokyo. When they finally arrived home, they discovered the deportation documents prepared by American officals included forged "confessions" that they'd planned to work illegally in the United States.

  ICE illegally violated Pohl's and Lepere's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. By strip-searching two innocent teenage girls and making them spend the night in a cell with a murderer, ICE violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. The officials who did this must be fired and prosecuted for false arrest and false imprisonment.

• Imagine government agents placing an explosive next to your house, blowing a hole in the wall, and charging in at 6 AM with weapons drawn. This happened to Jenny Ramirez in June. She was at home with her two children, ages 6 and 1. The agents never knocked.

  The CBP agents were there looking for Ramirez' boyfriend, a U.S. citizen who was not home at the time. They went after him because he'd been in a fender-bender with a CBP truck. The agents in the truck he hit told him he was free to go.

  By blowing a hole in the side of her house instead of knocking on the door, the CPB agents violated Ramirez' Fourth Amendment right to be secure in her house, and her Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of her property (the wall of her house) without due process of law.

• George Retes is an American citizen, a father, and an Army veteran. One July morning, he arrived at his job as a security guard to learn there was an ICE raid in progress. He tried to explain to them that he was an American citizen trying to get to work, but they didn't listen. So he returned to his car -- which is when things went bad. According to CNN,

  "The agents surrounded his car and started yelling conflicting orders to get out of his car, reverse and park his car, according to the father. Retes then reversed, trying to leave the tense scene, he said.

  "Agents continued yelling, banged on his window and pulled on his door trying to get it open, he said. The uniformed federal agents eventually threw what appeared to be tear gas into the crowd of protesters, which blurred Retes’ vision and made him choke.

  "'I’m trying to leave. I’m trying to get out of here,' Retes said he told the agents in between gasping breaths.

  "At that moment, one agent shattered his driver’s side window, and another sprayed pepper spray in his face, Retes said, recalling feeling a piece of glass from the window cut his leg. Then, they dragged him out of the car and threw him on the ground, pinning him down, he said.

  "'I had one agent kneeling on my back and another one kneeling on my neck,' said Retes, who noted he had neck and back injuries from his four-year Army service.

  "Retes recalled telling officers he couldn’t breathe because of the pepper spray and tear gas. But he said they proceeded to put him in handcuffs and dragged him away without explaining what he was arrested for. The Department of Homeland Security would later accuse Retes of assault – an allegation he vehemently denies.

  "'They never told me anything … I sat there for hours asking them why I was here, why I’m being arrested, and no one could give me an answer,' Retes said. 'No one even knew who arrested me or why they arrested me. No one knew what was going to happen to me or who I was even going to go with.'

  "He remained alone in a cell with bright lights that never turned off, according to Retes. Guards were always outside his cell and a psychiatrist checked on him once a day to ensure he wouldn’t harm himself, he said. [But] In the cell for [three] days, Retes was never told why he was arrested or if he was charged with any crimes, he said."

  He was denied his phone call and was held incommunicado with no medical treatment. He wasn't allowed to shower, call a lawyer, or call his family. He missed his daughter's birthday party, and his family had no idea where he was.

  Retes was finally let go after three days. He'd spent the entire time in pain from his injuries and unble to sleep.

  "'So I basically was locked up for no reason, and missed my daughter’s birthday for no reason?' Retes said he asked the guards. He says he was met with silence."

  An assistant DHS secretary told CNN that "George Retes—a U.S. citizen—became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement. He challenged agents and blocked their route by refusing to move his vehicle out of the road.”

  "'I would like to see where I assaulted an officer, and if that’s true, why wasn’t I charged?' he said. '...That’s not what happened.'"

  ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. By detaining him without charges, ICE violated Retes' Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in his person against unreasonable seizures; his Fifth Amendment right to due process; his Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer; his Sixth Amendment right to know the accusations against him; and his Eighth Amendment right against cruel punishment.

  All the ICE officials involved in this must be fired and charged with false arrest (i.e. detaining someone without a warrant or probable cause). The prison officials who knowingly held an innocent American citizen without medical treatment for three days must be fired and charged with false imprisonment.

  Retes wasn't the only victim of that ICE raid. According to the Los Angeles Times, Jaime Alanis Garcia, a 57-year-old farmer, fell to his death during the raid. A professor, Jonathan Caravello, saw a tear gas grenade land under someone's wheelchair. He moved the person and got tackled by several agents. At this writing, Professor Caravello is still in custody.

• Javier Salazar, now 19, came to the United States from Venezuela in 2022 to join his father. Both Javier and his father applied for asylum -- but in mid-March ICE arrested them at their home in Maryland. ICE declared Javier a gang member because they found a photo of him standing next to another kid who had a plastic squirt gun in his pocket. Salazar and his father were going to be renditioned to El Salvador when a judge ordered a halt to the Trump Administration's rendition policy. The two asylum-seekers are still in prison. ICE violated Salazar's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures, his Fifth Amendment right to due process, and his Sixth Amendment right to a trial.

• Heidi Sanchez is a legal Cuban immigrant who has been living here since 2019 and is married to an American citizen. They have a one-year-old baby daughter together. Sanchez was detained at a routine immigration check-in appointment and deported back to Cuba. The baby is inconsolable without her mother and has been hospitalized. "The baby is distressed and does not want to eat," Sanchez's husband told the Miami Herald. ICE illegally violated Sanchez' Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Arturo Suarez Trejo is a Venezuelan-born musician. Like other Venezuelan immigrants, he was detained because he has tattoos, and has nothing to do with any crimes or gangs. His wife only found out that he'd been renditioned to CECOT prison in El Salvador when she recognized him in a photograph with other detainees.

• Vincent Scardina is fine -- he's an American citizen who voted for Trump. In late May, ICE detained a third of his staff -- Nicaraguan immigrants. "It's quite a shock," he said. "You get to know these guys, you become their friends -- not just an employer but a friend."

• Ward Sakeik, a wedding photographer, was born in Saudi Arabia to parents from Gaza. Since children born to foreigners in Saudi Arabia are not Saudi citizens, Sakeik is stateless -- not a citizen of any country. She legally entered the United States at age 8 and was allowed to stay, so long as she checked in regularly with ICE.

  Fourteen years later, she fell in love with an American citizen, began the process of applying to be a legal permanent resident, and she and her husband got married. ICE detained her when she was returning from her honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. (The Virgin Islands are part of the United States, and Sakeik never left the country.) According to KERA News, "After arriving at a Miami airport, Sakeik said she was handcuffed for 16 hours without any food or water on the bus to a detention center in Florida. She was frequently denied the opportunity to call her husband or attorney." She spent five months in a detention center, and ICE attempted to illegally deport her to Israel, a country she's never been to. According to the Huffington Post, the prison "included unhygienic restrooms, rusted beds and insects that bit other detained migrants." Sakeik was never told why she'd been detained.

  Showing great respect for the Bill of Rights, a DHS spokesman claimed that "any claim that there is a lack of food or subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false... Why does the media continue to fall for the sob stories of illegal aliens in detention and villainize ICE law enforcement?" Perhaps it's because ICE violated Sakeik's Fourth Amendment right to be secure in her person from unreasonable seizures; violated her Fifth Amendment rights by depriving her of liberty for five months without due process; violated her Sixth Amendment rights by detaining her without charges; and violated the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Moreover, DHS lied when they said Sakeik was an illegal alien, so why would anyone think they're telling the truth when they claimed -- in the same statement, no less -- that there are no inhumane conditions at the detention facilities?

• Guilherme Silva's artwork is found all over the United States. Born in Brazil, Silva is married to an American citizen who's pregnant with their next child. He has a work permit and was in the process of applying for legal residency when he was detained in Washington State. When he asked to see a warrant, the ICE agents laughed at him and refused. According to his wife, the food he was given in detention has made him sick. Since Silva has done nothing wrong, ICE violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures; his Fourth Amendment right to see a warrant for his arrest; his Sixth Amendment right to know the charges against him; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Ayman Soliman fled violence in his native Egypt in 2014 and was granted asylum in the United States. He became a chaplain and has spent the past decade volunteering at hospitals and prisons. In June, he was detained at a routine ICE check-in and told his legal residence had been revoked. By canceling his legal residence without telling him and then detaining him because he didn't know he was supposed to leave, ICE violated Soliman's Fifth Amendment right to due process, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Constitution's Bill of Attainder clause.

• Moises Sotelo-Casas was detained outside his church in June. He has been living in Oregon since the 1990's and owns a winemaking business. ICE claims Sotelo-Casas entered the United States illegally in 2006 and was convicted of a DUI. There is no evidence to support either claim.

  By detaining Sotelo-Casas based on charges for which there is no evidence, ICE violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him, his Sixth Amendment right to a trial, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Badar Khan Suri is an Indian-born professor who has a valid visa and was teaching at Georgetown. He was arrested by masked Homeland Security agents outside his home in Virginia. They told him his visa had been revoked. It was the first time he'd heard of this. According to Politico, "Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime." Professor Suri and his lawyer believe that he's being punished for his wife's political views. (She's a U.S. citizen with Palestinian heritage.) Suri is also being held in LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana.

  ICE illegally violated Professor Suri's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights, the Bill of Attainder clause, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Rick Taylor, a 71-year-old American citizen, was detained by CBP at Miami Airport when returning from vacation in the Caribbean. They asked him if he was from California. When he answered in the affirmative, they put him in a cell and held him there incommunicado for the next 45 minutes. He's a political consultant and ran the campaign of the last Republican mayor of Los Angeles.

  CBP violated Taylor's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures, his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of his liberty without due process; his Sixth Amendment right to be notified of the accusations against him; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. By discriminating against him based on what State he lives in, CBP violated Taylor's Fourteeth Amendment right to equal protection.

• Jermaine Thomas, a janitor, was born to an American soldier on an American army base in Germany. In June, he was arrested and deported to Jamaica -- a country he's never been to. Because he was born to an American soldier on a US military base, he doesn't have German citizenship. His father was a Jamaican-born U.S. citizen -- but Thomas' father died when he was 11, and Thomas never visited his father's birth country. Thomas is currently staying in a Jamaican hotel, doesn't know anyone in the country, and has no idea how to get a job there -- or even if he's legally allowed to work in a country where he's not a citizen.

  Thomas, an Irish citizen, visited the United States to visit a friend and was injured shortly before he was scheduled to return home. His doctors forbid him from flying, so he overstayed his visa by three days. ICE then detained him. He spent over three months in detention before intervention by the Irish government allowed him to return home. "Believe it or not, the ICE detention place was better run than the federal prison. When I went to Atlanta, it was grim, it was like a basement with no sunlight,” he told an interviewer. “There were riots, stabbings, fights, everything you could imagine and I was just thrown in the middle of it. It was the first time I wasn’t with my kids at Christmas, it was the first time I’ve ever missed a kid’s birthday. I hadn’t heard from work, I didn’t know what was happening with my job, I didn’t know what was happening with my kids. I was scared... I had 22 hours a day locked in a room for months, staring at the ceiling with my own thoughts."

  ICE violated Thomas' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures (he was in the country due to a medical emergency), his Fifth Amendment right to due process, and his Sixth Amendment right to an attorney.

• Lennon Tyler is an American citizen with a German fiance. When returning to Las Vegas from a vacation in Mexico, they were both detained and handcuffed. Though Tyler was later released, her fiance was not. He spent 16 days in prison before being deported to Germany. The German fiance was never told why he was taken into custody, and his offer to go home voluntarily was ignored. He was never charged with anything.

  The same thing happened to Jessica Brosche, a German tourist who was imprisoned for six weeks before she was allowed to go home. The Huffington Post continued: "On the Canadian border, a backpacker from Wales spent nearly three weeks at a detention center before flying home this week. And a Canadian woman on a work visa detained at the Tijuana border spent 12 days in detention before returning home last weekend."

  ICE illegally violated the tourists' Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• V.M.L. is a two-year-old American citizen who was deported to Honduras along with her mother. It's illegal to deport American citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote: "These actions stand in direct violation of ICE's own written and informal directives, which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers -- regardless of immigration status -- when deportations are being carried out."

  V.M.L. is one of (at this writing) four known American children who have been illegally deported. Two of the children are severely ill and were deported to countries where they will likely have no access to medicine. If these children die, those involved could be guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

• Hector Valdes Cocho was banished from his native Cuba in 2022. He came to the United States and urged people to vote for Trump. ICE arrested him in January. He is in prison waiting to be deported back to the country that banished him.

• Sofia Vargas, 4, came to California legally in 2023 with her parents from their native Mexico seeking medical treatment. Sofia suffers from a life-threatening illness and, according to her doctor, will die if her treatment is interrupted. It's impossible for her to leave the country without interrupting her treatment. "Patients... are not allowed to leave the country because the infrastructure to provide... immediate intervention if there is a problem... depends on our program's utilization of U.S. based healthcare resources and does not transfer across borders," he wrote. In April, the DODO Trump Administration sent Sofia and her mother a letter informing them that their legal residency was terminated, canceling her mother's work permit, and ordering them to leave the United States. This violates the Fifth Amendment (Sofia's right not to be deprived of her life without due process), the Writ of Habeas Corpus (an innocent family's legal residence cannot be terminated without cause), and the Eighth Amendment (the Trump Administration cannot inflict cruel and unusual punishment on Sofia's parents by forcing them to watch their daughter die of a treatable disease.)

• Andrea Velez, an American citizen, was kidnapped by ICE agents on the way to work. According to NPR,

  "Andrea had just been dropped off at work by her mom and her sister, when the pair witnessed masked federal agents grabbing her and taking Andrea in an unmarked car during an immigration raid. One video shows a masked agent lifting Andrea off the ground and carrying her away." According to her sister, "Just because of the color of our skin, they think that we’re criminals. My sister was there, so they were like, 'Oh, she looks Hispanic, so let’s take her, too.'"

  Velez' lawyer told an interviewer more details.

  "As she exited the vehicle, she walked three, four steps onto the sidewalk, and suddenly there was a swarm of vehicles surrounding her. So, as she’s kind of getting her bearings what’s going on, she sees vendors over to her right, and she assumes, 'OK, this must be - maybe it’s a raid. I don’t know.' She sees men approaching them. But she looks to her left, and she sees an ICE agent about 10 feet away, running full speed at her, and becomes terrified. She's 4'11". This is a man who, in her estimation, is over six feet. He’s masked. And he does not stop. So she becomes - she gets scared, and her reaction is to cover and block herself to protect herself, and she’s thrown to the ground.
  "The ICE agent continues on for about another 10, 15 seconds to get their target, and then returns and tells her she's under arrest for what she describes as interfering. She gets put into a vehicle, a van, an unmarked van, and she's in handcuffs. And while she's waiting, she sees the [first] officer, so she walks over to the officer and asks if he would help her. She doesn't know who these men are. And that’s when you see the ICE agent pick her up and take her back to the unmarked van.
  "She is being charged with... assault on a peace officer. So, the version of the story that the federal agent is putting forth is that Andrea Velez purposefully walked into his path in order to protect whoever their target was, and knocked that ICE agent off balance and hit him in the head. It's a complete fabrication.
  "They were speaking to her in Spanish, even though she was demonstrating that she... could speak fluent English and that she was a U.S. citizen... I think it was a matter of 'Let’s see if she is a U.S. citizen. And if she is, then we’ll slap on these charges.' ... arrest now, ask questions later."

  ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens inside the United States. They violated Velez' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The agents who detained her must be fired and charged with false arrest.

• Cliona Ward is a permanent resident with a green card. A native of Ireland, she's lived in the United States for thirty years and is the only caregiver for her ill son. After a trip to Ireland to visit her sick father, she returned to the United States and was detained. She was told she needed to present her case to a judge. At this writing she is in prison awaiting a hearing. ICE violated her Fourth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Zia S. worked for the U.S. military in Afghanistan as an interpreter. When the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, he and his family fled to the United States. They entered the country legally, were granted temporary residence, and applied to become permanent residents. When he arrived for a routine interview, ICE detained and imprisoned him. "I’d rather someone just kill me in the U.S. than return to Afghanistan," he told his lawyer. ICE falsely accused Zia of entering the country illegally. This isn't true, and Zia has documents that prove it.

  ICE violated Zia's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures, his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• Pavlo Zinkevych was one of the first people to be wrongly detained. Zinkevych is a Ukranian-born man living legally in Texas. Six days after Trump was sworn in, Zinkevych was arrested due to a misunderstanding. A judge ordered his release, but instead, he was transferred into ICE custody. He has been in detention ever since. According to his fiancee, he requires dental work and is in constant pain, but the ICE officials refuse to treat him. Instead, they threatened to deport him to his hometown in a war-torn area of Ukraine near the Russian border. His lawyer argued successfully in court that Zinkevych's detention is illegal. The presiding judge agreed, but claimed she didn't have the authority to order his release.

  By keeping Zinkevych in prison with no warrant and no charges and denying him medical care, ICE violated his Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

• A mother and her two children -- their names have not been released -- legally entered the United States last December seeking asylum from Honduras. They complied with all laws and regulations, but were detained in June at a routine check-in by plainclothes ICE officers. The younger child -- a boy of 6 -- has cancer, and has not been able to see his doctor since he's been in custody. They have been in detention in Texas for weeks. ICE violated their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures; their Fifth Amendment right to due process; their Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the nature of the accusations against them; their Sixth Amendment right to a trial; and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. In addition, by denying a six-year-old medical care for a painful and possibly terminal illness, ICE violated the six-year-old's Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishments. By forcing the mother and the older sibling to watch the six-year-old suffer from a treatable disease, ICE violated their Eighth Amendment protection against cruelty as well.

• ICE arrested at least 200 people who came to the United States seeking asylum -- when the refugees arrived at a courthouse for a routine check-in. At least one of them was pregnant. Another was two years old. Another family with two children was kept in a basement room overnight with no beds -- along with dozens of others. The father's detention violated a protective court order; one of the children is an American citizen.

In April, Trump wrote that "We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years." He said that after firing eight immigration judges in an already overworked system. Trump is wrong. The Constitution isn't optional.

At the end of April, a judge blocked Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants on the grounds that we're not at war. Neither the nation of Venezuela nor any armed Venezuelan group is attempting to conquer the United States.

According to CBS News, in the first five months of Trump's second term, ICE detained 59,000 people -- not counting those who were later released. According to the Cato Institute, 65% of those detained are innocent, and only 7% of detainees are violent criminals. Those who do have criminal records were mostly convicted of... traffic violations. Disappearing people off the street without a warrant is not law enforcement. It's kidnapping. Detaining people without a warrant isn't law enforcement. It's false imprisonment. Everyone in the United States and El Salvador involved in the kidnapping and false imprisonment of innocent people must be brought to justice -- including Trump, who admitted he was illegally detaining and deporting people without trials. The people targeted by the DODO Trump Administration -- undocumented immigrants, legal residents, tourists, and American citizens -- were deprived of their Constitutional rights, including freedom of speech, the right to be secure from unreasonable seizures, the right to due process, the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against them, the right to confront witnesses against them, the right to have the assistance of counsel, the right to trial, the right to be free from to cruel and unusual punishments, the Bill of Attainder clause (the government can't declare a person guilty without a trial) and the Writ of Habeas Corpus (the requirement that the government prove before a judge that a crime has been committed and that the police didn't arrest the wrong person.) As Ms. Mooney discovered, the ICE officials knew perfectly well that they were breaking the law and knew they were doing it routinely. Everyone involved in this travesty must be charged, provided with counsel, tried, brought to justice, and treated humanely. They must be provided with the due process and Constitutional rights they denied their victims.

According to a DODO Department of Homeland Security post on social media, ICE denies that they utilize plainclothes officers and unmarked vehicles -- despite overwhelming video evidence to the contrary.
Therefore, according to Homeland Security's own DODO statements, anybody in plainclothes who abducts people using unmarked vehicles is not a real ICE agent -- it's a criminal impersonating a federal officer. That means if someone not wearing a uniform claims to be an ICE agent, that person is lying, and innocent Americans have every right to defend themselves against criminals trying to kidnap them.
In light of this statement, all charges of "impeding a federal agent" must be dismissed immediately.
Moreover: by denying that the plainclothes ICE agents disappearing people off the street are ICE agents, DHS has given permission for Americans to fight back. Therefore, the Homeland Security Department is itself responsible for assaults against its own agents!
It's blatantly obvious to everyone that DHS is lying. There are dozens of videos proving that ICE has sent plainclothes, masked agents in unmarked vehicles to kidnap people off the street without warrants. The people disappeared by the plainclothes ICE officers have either been deported or locked up in ICE detention facilities. There's no question that they were detained by ICE.
What's more, the DODO Trump Administration and DHS have opposed proposed laws requiring federal agents to wear uniforms and forbidding them to wear masks.
DODO statements like the one above -- blatantly denying the reality of what everyone can see happening with their own eyes -- is a common tactic used by dictatorships. The DODO Trump Administration has turned DHS and ICE into the enforcement arm of a fascist police state.

Non-citizens who are convicted of crimes should be deported to their country of origin -- if that's part of their sentence. Deporting legal residents who have complied with the law is illegal and unconstitutional.

If the DODO government can do this to legal residents who have committed no crime, they can do it to you. Trump has already said he wants to. If Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden had disappeared just one legal resident -- let alone over two hundred of them -- they would have been impeached immediately.

If all this wasn't bad enough, in June, the State of Florida built a new detention facility in the middle of the everglades. Dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by Florida officials and "Alligator Auschwitz" by critics, this facility meets the classic definition of a concentration camp. The prison camp is located in a swamp with dangerous animals, including alligators and pythons, in an area often hit by hurricanes. Part of the reason for its construction was to terrify immigrants into leaving the United States before they're detained. The camp had been open for less than two weeks when detainees reported "days without showers, extreme temperatures, lack of water, and maggots in their food." One detainee said "They give you food only once a day, food that even has worms in it." Another detainee said, "They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion." Detainees are plagued by mosquitoes, and the lights "are left on 24 hours a day."

It appears that the concentration camp's population consists of people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Emerson Colindres, Shirly Guardado Correa, Caroline Dias Goncalves, Martin Diaz, Kasper Eriksen, Roseani Ferreira de Oliveira, Sara Lopez Garcia, Mohsen Mahdawi, Jasmine Mooney, Rumeysa Ozturk, Javier Salazar, Heidi Sanchez, Ward Sakeik, Chaplain Ayman Soliman, Moises Sotelo-Casas, Professor Badar Suri, Hector Valdes Cocho, and Pavlo Zinkevych -- innocent legal residents accused of crimes by proven liars with no evidence, no trials, and no convictions. Though there may be ex-convicts in the concentration camp as well, there's no evidence that these ex-convicts aren't people in the same position as Chris Landry, Sae Joon Park, and Isidro Perez -- people who completed their sentences and turned their lives around decades ago.

If Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden had built a concentration camp and filled it with legal residents who have committed no crimes, they would have been impeached immediately. During his first term, Trump was impeached twice. The first time, he was caught trying to extort another country into framing his electoral opponent for a crime he didn't commit in an attempt to steal the 2020 election. The second time, Trump incited his supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to stay in power after having been voted out. Now Trump, Noem, Homan, and Rubio have ordered plainclothes ICE agents wearing masks to drive around the country in unmarked vehicles and disappear American citizens, legal residents, and tourists off the street with no warrants, no probable cause, no charges, and no due process, and lock them in a concentration camp. The fact that Congress thinks the first two offenses are impeachable and the third one is not boggles the mind.

Sign the petition to stop the DODO disappearances and mass deportations. Use Amnesty International's form to write to your members of Congress and demand that they close the concentration camp. The truth is, though, that signing petitions doesn't really do much. The way to stop this fascist travesty is to write your Representatives, your Senators, your State legislators, and your Governor and demand that they take all legal means to protect innocent Americans, legal residents, and tourists from ICE's abuses of power.

Trump has been talking for years about serving more than two terms, the limit established by the Constitution. In late March, Trump said in so many words that he was "not joking." He is now selling "Trump 2028" hats.

In his first term, Trump was impeached twice, once for trying to steal the 2020 election, and the second time for trying to stay in power after he was voted out. If those are impeachable offenses, it follows that seeking an illegal third term is also an impeachable offense. If Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden had commented once about serving a third term -- let alone the many times Trump has mentioned it -- they would not have finished their current terms. They would have been impeached and removed in three weeks.

In April, Trump illegally ordered the DODO Justice Department to investigate two officals from his first term who Trump now considers political enemies. The first, Chris Krebs, was in charge of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security. In November 2020, Krebs correctly announced that the election was the most secure in American history. This drew the wrath of Trump, who refused to admit that then-President-Elect Biden had received seven million more votes than he had. Trump then fired Krebs -- even though it's illegal to fire a government employee for doing their job. Trump has been lying about the 2020 election ever since, insisting (all evidence to the contrary) that Biden had somehow "stolen" the election from him. "He's the fraud. He's a disgrace," Trump insisted of Krebs when signing the order. Krebs was telling the truth. Trump was lying in 2020 and still is. Not only is Trump attacking people for telling the truth in response to his lies, he is now trying to have them prosecuted for it. Trump's tactic is to tell lies, then use the power of the government to go after anyone who responds with the truth.

The second, Miles Taylor, worked at the Department of Homeland Security. Taylor wrote an anonymous article in 2018 assuring worried Americans that he and other officials were working behind the scenes to restrain Trump's worst impulses -- despite Trump's "amorality" and fawning over Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Neither Krebs nor Taylor are suspected of committing any crimes. Trump ordered them investigated because they publicly acknowledged established facts: Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. If Trump can order investigations of innocent former government officials who told the truth about his 2020 Big Lie, he can order investigations of anyone who tells the truth about his 2025 Big Lie (his nonsense claim that Ukraine attacked Russia.) In fact, since Trump acknowledged at the time that Putin had invaded Ukraine and called him a "genius," Donald Trump could order investigations of anyone who accurately quotes Donald Trump!

In June, Trump ordered an investigation of a third innocent person -- former President Joe Biden. Trump has been falsely claiming for years that Biden is both senile and a criminal mastermind -- at the same time! In May, four months after leaving office, Biden was diagnosed with cancer. Trump's use of government power to persecute an innocent 82-year-old retiree battling a possibly terminal disease is low even for a man famous for his cruelty.

Later in June, Trump said he's looking into investigating and arresting two more innocent people -- Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security Secretary under the Biden Administration) and New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. Neither one has done anything remotely criminal. Trump's slander of Mamdani was particularly vicious, even for the rudest liar in American politics. Trump falsely claimed Mamdani a "communist lunatic," a "total nut job," and falsely accused Mamdani of being an illegal immigrant. (Mamdani's a U.S. citizen.)

In his first term, Trump was impeached twice, once for trying to pressure a foreign country into investigating an innocent person running against him, and the second time for trying to stay in power after he was voted out. If those are impeachable offenses, ordering government investigations of innocent people is an impeachable offense as well -- especially considering one of the innocent people he's ordered investigated is the same innocent person he tried to smear last time!

As noted above, launching investigations of innocent people violates their Fourth Amendment rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Had President Clinton ordered investigations of his political enemies -- Kenneth Starr, for instance -- he would have been impeached immediately. Likewise, President Obama's Attorney General -- Eric Holder -- bent over backwards to protect former Bush Administration officials from being prosecuted over Bush's torture program, and President Biden's Attorney General -- Merrick Garland -- forbade his subordinates to investigate Donald Trump until two years after Trump left office. Had Obama or Biden ordered the Justice Department to investigate anyone, Congress would have launched an impeachment investigation for abuse of power.

Trump fired Carla Hayden, head of the Library of Congress, a year before her term expired. As noted above, it's illegal to fire a government employee for doing their job. Morever, Hayden was fired under false pretenses. Trump's DODO press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Hayden "did not fit the needs of the American people... [she did] quite concerning things [by having] inappropriate books for children" in the library. This is complete nonsense. The Library of Congress is an archive that automatically gets a copy of every book published in the United States. It's not a lending library. The Librarian has no say over the Library's contents. The Library is closed to people under 16, and the Library does not allow anyone -- including children -- to check out books. It's physically impossible for Hayden to have done what Leavitt accused her of doing.

Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden illegally fired an innocent government official under false pretenses, Congress would have opened an impeachment investigation immediately.

Trump signed an executive order blocking funding for the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio. This is illegal under the Impoundment Control Act. Had Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden tried to illegally impound funds by executive order, they would have been impeached immediately. Tell the House to stop Trump.

In June, Trump got in a public feud with his close ally, Elon Musk. Musk -- who runs an electric car company -- decided he didn't like the "one big beautiful bill" that would cancel tax credits on electric vehicles, defund courts' ability to uphold the law when Trump breaks it, raise taxes on poor people, massively cut taxes for Musk and other billionaires, and add $2.4 trillion to the deficit. The bill would also kick 17 million people off their health care, defund Medicaid, close rural hospitals, and close 2/3 of the nursing homes in the country. An irate Musk claimed Trump had sexually assaulted minors. (If this is true, this didn't prevent Musk from endorsing Trump, financing his re-election campaign, enthusiastically supporting the rest of Trump's despicable behavior, or working for him for months.) As this dominated the headlines, Trump and Noem ordered ICE to conduct raids in Los Angeles.

ICE chased people looking for work through hardware store parking lots. They raided clothing stores. They detained an American citizen who was nine months pregnant. Residents tried to stop ICE from abducting their neighbors, and spontaneous protests soon broke out. Though some vandalism occurred, almost all the protests were peaceful. Los Angeles police arrested the few dozen people who had broken laws during the protests.

This wasn't what Trump wanted. Trump wanted violence and spectacle -- an excuse to order attacks on anyone who disagreed with him while claiming to be on the side of law and order. First Trump launched his usual barrage of lies and slander. He called the protesters "radical left," called them "paid troublemakers," and denounced the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California as incompetent. He called the protests a "riot." Trump continued: "A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations." He said he would "liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion."

Obviously, there is no invasion, there is no occupation, there are no insurrectionist mobs, and the Los Angeles police department always had the situation under control.

Trump and DODO Defense Secretary Hegseth then ordered members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles. It is illegal for the President to do this without the consent of the Governor. Trump also threatened to deploy the National Guard to other cities. "We're going to have troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country. We're not gonna let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden."

Obviously, the country was not torn apart under the Biden Administration. Moreover: under the Posse Comitatus Act, it's illegal to use the military for law enforcement.

California Governor Newsom urged residents: "Don't give Donald Trump what he wants. Speak up. Stay peaceful. Stay calm. Do not use violence and respect the law enforcement officers that are trying their best to keep the peace. [Trump is] trying to manufacture a crisis in LA County - deploying troops not for order, but to create chaos. Don't take the bait. Never use violence or harm law enforcement."

Trump then said Newsom should be arrested, and that the governor is "doing a bad job, causing a lot of death." Newsom has committed no crimes, and there have been no deaths.

The State of California then filed suit, asking a court to uphold the law and restore the State government's control over the National Guard.

The next day, Trump sent in 700 Marines to support the National Guard. This is illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act. Marines are soldiers, trained to hunt down and destroy enemy soldiers on a battlefield during a war. They're not trained in policing innocent civilians engaging in their First Amendment right to protest. While there, the Marines illegally arrested Marcos Leao -- an innocent American citizen on his way to an appointment at the Veterans' Administration. Leao was released without charges.

A few days later, a judge agreed with the State of California and ordered control of the National Guard returned to the Governor. Trump appealed, and a higher court suspended the first judge's ruling.

In June, Trump announced that he would order ICE to prioritize large cities with Democratic mayors for their immigration raids instead of other parts of the country. Ordering illegal raids targeting innocent legal residents (and others) based upon the political party of the local elected leaders violates the First Amendment right to free assembly and the right to petition the government. Also, treating some locations in the country differently from others based upon who won the last election violates the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump says the President should not order military strikes without Congressional approval. He has spent his entire political career claiming he would end wars if elected, especially in the Middle East. In June, war broke out betweeh Israel and Iran. Over the next week, Trump approved DODO plans to attack Iran, threatened the life of Iran's supreme leader, demanded Iran's "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER," and told Iran to evacuate all ten million people from their capital city. Though America's intelligence agencies concluded Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and isn't close to building one, Trump ordered American bombers to destroy several potential nuclear targets in Iran -- riskig an unnecessary war. He violated the War Powers Act by not informing Congress.

A few days later, Trump declared victory, saying that Iran's nuclear program had been "completely destroyed" and comparing his attack on Iran to the end of World War II. According to US intelligence, this is not the case, and Iran's nuclear program was only set back a few months. Trump then claimed he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for ordering the military attack.

Trump's attack on Iran was illegal and unconstitutional. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Congress has given Trump no authority to use military force to attack another country. Moreover, Trump has idea what he's doing. He initially claimed he did not want regime change in Iran. A few days later, he claimed he does want regime change in Iran. Trump claimed that his National Intelligence Director was "wrong" when she said Iran didn't pose an imminent threat, and then claimed Iran's long-term threat was destroyed when it wasn't. Trump's press secretary then blamed the reporter who asked about it. Trump has no strategy to win a war and no plan to win the peace afterwards. Trump has taken no steps to defend the United States against Iranian retaliation, either by Iran forcing the price of oil up or by ordering proxies to stage terrorist attacks against American targets. (Trump's counterterrorism chief is a 22-year-old with no experience in counter-terrorism, intelligence, or law enforcement.)

George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq was a disaster in every sense of the word. Bush ordered the conquest of Iraq under false pretenses and had no plan for what to do after toppling Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Iran is three times larger. Trump's DODO attack on Iran will backfire, and a full-scale war would be catastrophic for both sides. Trump makes Bush look smart.

The Iranian people -- not the United States -- are the ones who must stand up to their unelected leaders and demand justice and freedom.

Imagine President Obama or President Biden ordering an attack on Iran without (1) seeking Congressional authorization to use military force, (2) presenting any evidence that Iran had attacked the United States, or (3) presenting any evidence that Iran posed a serious threat. Their Cabinets would have immediately invoked the 25th Amendment and removed them from office on the grounds that the President had just gone insane. If that had not happened, Congress would have immediately impeached them and removed them from office. (Sign the petition demanding no war with Iran. Note, however, that signing petitions doesn't really do much. Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to stop Trump's warmongering.)

In his first term, Trump was impeached for trying to use Presidential power to strong-arm another country to smear a candidate running against him. In his second term, Trump threatened to attack four allies (Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama); pledged to commit ethnic cleansing in Gaza; and ordered military strikes on Iran without Congress declaring war. If trying to coerce another country to help you win an election is an impeachable offense, threatening to start six wars is plainly an impeachable offense as well.

In July, Trump threatened to revoke the citizenship of comedian Rosie O'Donnell. Whether you agree with O'Donnell's politics or not, she is an innocent American citizen who has not done anything remotely criminal. It IS unconstitutional, however, to terminate the citizenship of someone born in the United States. Had Presidents Biden, Obama, or Clinton threatened to illegally take away someone's citizenship -- Kenneth Starr's, for instance -- they would have been impeached immediately.

As Talking Points Memo pointed out in 2017, Trump destroys everything he touches. When Trump gives immoral or illegal orders, his staff and advisors have a choice: stand up to Trump and get fired, or keep quiet and enable Trump's crimes. During Trump's first term, some of his subordinates stood up to him, knowing it would (and did) cost them their jobs. For his second term, Trump deliberately chose unqualified hacks who won't tell him when he's making a mistake. These enablers are complicit in Trump's high crimes and misdimeanors, and must also be impeached and removed from office.

Furthermore: according to Mother Jones, Musk's role in the government was unconstitutional, and everything he did as part of the DODO Trump Administration was illegal.

"Multiple challenges to Musk and the actions of his Department of Government Efficiency allege his vast authority violates the Appointments Clause, one of the Constitutions key anti-corruption measures. Under this clause, which the framers crafted to prevent the kingly practice of handing jobs and authority to unaccountable allies, any officer of the United States must be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Moreover, such appointees must fill a role created by Congress. Musk's exercise of vast authority, at least four lawsuits allege, is unconstitutional, as he was neither confirmed by the Senate nor is he serving in any role Congress created...

"'If it turns out that, as Donald Trump has continuously said, Musk is actually exercising significant government power... that allows him to overrule or countermand cabinet level officers,' says Noah Rosenblum, a professor at New York University School of Law, 'then there are definitely questions about what position he has been appointed to and whether the authority he is exercising is consistent with the method of appointment.'"

While all this was going on, Musk announced that he would give two Wisconsin voters $1,000,000 checks to say thank you for voting. It's illegal in Wisconsin to pay people for voting. Musk is not above the law -- State or Federal. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed to investigate Musk.

A month later, a whistleblower alleged that an account in Russia attempted to access the National Labor Relations Board's computers via accounts created by Musk and his lackeys. The attempt was blocked -- this time.

What's more: on March 2, Secretary Bessent announced that the Treasury Department would no longer enforce the Corporate Transparency Act, a law designed to prevent money laundering. "This is a victory for common sense," Bessent claimed. In reality, it's a victory for money launderers.

Laws applies equally to everyone. The Treasury Secretary does not have the authority to decide which laws to enforce and which not to. For allowing money launderers to get away with their crimes, Bessent must be impeached and removed from office.

As noted above, Vice President Vance gave aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States -- Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

DODO Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been on the job for five weeks when he declared that Putin's cyberattacks were no longer a threat and ordered the Defense Department to stop defending the United States against them.

Putin ordered a dozen cyberattacks against the United States in the last decade, including the 2024 Presidential election day bomb threats that took place only five months before Hegseth's announcement. One source told the Guardian that Defense Department officials were ordered not to follow up on -- or report on -- any Russian attacks. "There are thousands of US government employees and military working daily on the massive threat Russia poses as possibly the most significant nation state threat actor. Not to diminish the significance of China, Iran or North Korea, but Russia is at least on par with China as the most significant cyber threat."

Hegseth ordered his subordinates to stand down on their efforts to protect America from a hostile dictator who tried to disrupt the last Presidential election. Hegseth is aiding the enemies of the United States -- either deliberately or through gross incompetence. Had a Defense Secretary working for Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden ordered the Defense Department not to respond to twelve enemy cyberattacks, they would have been impeached in twelve hours. Sign the petition calling for Hegseth's resignation.

In June, Hegseth said he will not obey court orders forbidding the use of military force against American civilians on American soil. If a Democratic Defense Secretary had said this, they would have been impeached immediately.

On the day Pam Bondi was sworn in as DODO Attorney General, she shut down the FBI's task force in charge of preventing enemy nations from manipulating American elections. "Every cut made to our election security and foreign malign influence operations is like handing a gift on a silver platter to our foreign adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran," an election official told NPR. (Hmm. Why would Trump and Bondi do that?) On the same day, Bondi disbanded the task force in charge of enforcing sanctions on Russia.

The Atlantic observed: Trump's "Treasury Department announced that it would weaken enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act; his Justice Department disbanded a task force charged with targeting Russian oligarchs and relaxed the Foreign Agents Registration Act, such that Putin's allies can hire lawyers and lobbyists without having to worry about the embarrassing disclosure of those relationships. The Trump administration has essentially announced that the American financial system is open for Russia's kleptocratic business."

By stopping all efforts to prevent Russian spies from committing crimes on American soil -- which happened as recently as three months earlier -- Bondi gave aid to Putin. Bondi must be impeached and removed from office.

Senator Chris Murphy pointed out that, under Bondi's leadership, the Justice Department dropped investigations against Trump allies (including Elon Musk) and threatened anyone who tried to obstruct Musk. The Justice Department is supposed to investigate crimes and, where warranted, prosecute criminals -- not look the other way when the President's friends break the law. A few weeks later, a Deputy Attorney General dropped a corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams and brazenly announced that they'd made a deal to drop the charges in return for Adams pledging loyalty to Trump. The deputy then said that the charges could be reinstated if Adams didn't comply with Trump's policies. Six Justice Department prosecutors then resigned in protest. Had an Attorney General (or Deputy Attorney General) working for Clinton, Obama or Biden done this, they'd have been impeached in six hours.

A panel of law professors, attorneys, and retired judges issued an ethics complaint to the Florida Bar about Bondi's misconduct.

In June, Bondi fired three Justice Department attorneys who prosecuted rioters who tried to assassinate then-Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. Bondi then fired the Justice Department's ethics lawyer and at least 20 prosecutors who investigated crimes surrounding Trump's theft of classified documents. It's illegal to fire government employees for doing their jobs. Had Janet Reno or Merrick Garland done this, they would have been impeached in three days.

Sign the petition calling on Bondi to resign.

Since being placed in charge of public health, Kennedy has cancelled preparations for next winter's flu season -- when we know a deadly strain of flu is currently spreading among chickens and cattle. He either agreed to stop efforts to fight tuberculosis or looked the other way when Trump and Musk ended those efforts. He fired government workers who stop the spread of foodborne diseases and inspect cruise ships. He recommended measles treatments that don't work, and people have been admitted to hospitals for overdosing on the wrong medication.

In April, the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced that it would terminate the funds of any medical researcher who... criticized a foreign country. This policy violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Though Kennedy may not have been involved in this decision, his department oversees the NIH.

For implementing policies that are making people sick, Kennedy is grossly negligent, and must be impeached and removed from office. Had a Health Secretary working for Clinton, Obama or Biden done this, they'd have been impeached immediately.

In March 2025, Hegseth, Rubio, and Waltz used the instant messaging app Signal to discuss the time and place of planned military strikes against anti-American Houthi rebels in Yemen, a country on the Arabian peninsula.

This is illegal, and they knew it was illegal. It seems that Hegseth, Rubio, and Waltz used Signal because the app (in theory) automatically deletes messages after a set amount of time -- in this case, four weeks. Deleting executive communications violates the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act. All three condemned then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for doing exactly the same thing when she was a government official -- using a personal electronic communications server instead of a government one.

During their discussions of the planned air strikes, Waltz accidentally copied Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine! This violates the Espionage Act, which outlaws handling national security secrets with such gross negligence so they fall into the hands of an unauthorized person. It doesn't matter whether or not the secrets were shared intentionally, nor whether or not the person receiving them wanted anything to do with it. "There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and, potentially, criminal charges," wrote David French, a former Army lawyer. "...When you're careless in the military, people can die. If he had any honor at all, [Hegseth] would resign."

Goldberg later wrote that he thought the chat invitation was a hoax, or from a different Michael Waltz. He accepted the request, and was astounded to receive the combat mission plans two days later. "It should go without saying -- but I'll say it anyway -- that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting," Goldberg wrote, "and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app... I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president." Though the messages sounded authentic, Goldberg still thought it was probably a trick of some kind -- until the combat mission was underway and American planes started bombing Houthi targets. "The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group's creator, Michael Waltz, that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left -- or, more to the point, who I was."

Hegseth and several other DODO Trump Administration officals denied -- both to the press and before Congress -- that any combat plans or national security secrets were disclosed to Goldberg. The Atlantic took them at their word and released the messages Goldberg had received.

A few days after the chat, the Defense Department announced that Signal had been penetrated by Russian hackers and wasn't secure. The memo also reminded Defense Department personnel that it was illegal to use Signal or any other messaging app to transmit classified information. It's unthinkable that the DODO Secretary of Defense was unaware of this before using Signal to communicate combat plans.

This wasn't the only time Hegseth illegally used Signal to transmit classified information. Another chat session shortly afterwards discussed similar combat missions. Included on the chat were Hegseth's brother (who works for him at the Defense department), Hegseth's lawyer, and Hegseth's wife. The latter two likely do not have clearance to see classified information.

According to TruthOut, Waltz and others used unsecured Gmail accounts to conduct government business on at least 20 different occasions.

Hegseth, Rubio, and Waltz broke three national security laws. All three must be impeached and removed from office. (Sign the petitions at Common Defense and Win Without War.) Had Hillary Clinton used a private electronic communications server... yeah.

In May, Waltz was removed as National Security Advisor. Trump says he's going to name Waltz Ambassador to the United Nations instead.

Signalgate wasn't Secretary Rubio's only impeachable offense. In April, Rubio sent out a communication to all State Department employees at home and abroad instructing them to report on each other if anyone showed "anti-Christian bias." The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom to all Americans, so obviously it's unconstitutional to discriminate against Christians for being Christians. However, it's also unconstitutional to discriminate against non-Christians for not being Christian, or for the government to favor one religion over another. Article VI of the Constitution reads: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Rubio claims that the notice was sent out because of "anti-religious bias during the last presidential administration." President Biden was a Christian, and obviously he did not show bias against people of his own religion.

Had any previous Secretary of State -- such as Hillary Clinton -- unconstitutionally shown favoritism for one religion over another and told State Department employees to inform on each other, Congress would have launched an impeachment inquiry immediately.

Rubio soon committed a third impeachable offense -- violating the First Amendment and the Bill of Attainder clause. As noted above, Rubio has revoked hundreds of student visas because the students spoke out against another country -- which is protected by the First Amendment. He also violated the Constitution's Bill of Attainder clause by declaring innocent students criminals with no warnings, no charges, no hearings, and no trials. He then ordered the students disappeared off the street, violating the students' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures and their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

Had any previous Secretary of State -- Hillary Clinton, for instance -- ordered a single innocent student disappeared off the street, she would have been impeached within seconds.

The Signalgate scandal grew to include Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who sought to downplay the damage their colleagues had done. An Atlantic analysis pointed out that Trump's solution was not to replace his negligent staff but to blame the press. "Trump... tried to shift blame and publicly shrug off one of the most significant blunders in decades... Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered uneven and at times contradictory performances... when they testified before Congress that the Signal chat didn't include classified information."

As noted above, the chat obviously DID include classified information, leading Congressman Jerry Nadler to call for Gabbard and Ratcliffe to be prosecuted for perjury. "The latest text messages confirm that in yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe lied under oath in their testimony," Nadler wrote. "Perjury is a crime, and they should be prosecuted. Any other military officer who demonstrated such disregard for security protocols would likely face dismissal from service and even a court-martial. The Trump Administration appears to believe that cabinet secretaries and senior officials are immune from the law. They are not."

Had a CIA Director or a National Intelligence Director lied under oath during the Clinton, Obama, or Biden administrations, they would have been impeached immediately.

The Atlantic points out that Gabbard's incompetence is a danger to America.

"Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has suggested that the former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad did not use chemical weapons against his own people in 2017 and 2018, despite extensive documentation of the attacks, including by the... previous Trump administration."

Gabbard's refusal to believe the evidence could have deadly consequences. For instance, Iranian General Gholam Reza Jalali claimed in 2018 that Israel had caused a drought by... sabotaging Iranian clouds.

"This story seems like a silly bit of trivia until one realizes that Jalali was also the head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, tasked with combating sabotage. In other words, a key person in charge of thwarting Israeli spies in Iran was an incompetent conspiracy theorist obsessed with Jewish climate control. About a week after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Jalali celebrated the massacre and boasted in state-run media that Israel’s 'military and intelligence dominance has collapsed and will not be repaired anymore.'

"Jalali and other top Iranian officials were unable to defeat Israel not just because their own intelligence capabilities didn’t match up, but because their adherence to regime-sanctioned fantasies made grasping Israel’s actual abilities impossible for them."

Putin wishes to destroy the United States. Gabbard's, Bondi's and Hegseth's refusal to believe that Putin poses a threat is as dangerous to America as Jafali's incompetence was to Iran.

In July, Ratcliffe followed Trump's example and told the FBI to investigate two innocent people: former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan. An investigation begun during Trump's first term has already exonerated them. Imagine how Republicans would react if this had happened under a Democratic administration! For instance, imagine Janet Reno ordering an investigation of Kenneth Starr, and Starr being exonerated -- only for Eric Holder to order a second investigation of Starr over the same matter. Reno and Holder would have been impeached and removed from office.

In July, Gabbard also asked the FBI to prosecute Brennan and Comey, along with James Clapper (who'd been National Intelligence Director in 2016.) She claimed the three had been involved in a "Russia Hoax," an imaginary conspiracy to mislead the public into thinking Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had manipulated the 2016 election. The problem is that Putin DID manipulate the 2016 election, and Putin's disinformation and illegal computer hacks might well have swung the election in Trump's favor. Putin's propaganda campaign to help Trump is a well-documented historical fact.

Moreover, Gabbard's claims are nonsense. She falsely claims that the Obama Administration officials didn't sound the alarm until after the election. (They did warn Congress earlier, and Congressional Republicans refused to act on it.) She also says that since there's no evidence that Putin's spies hacked into voting machines (there isn't, and no one ever said there was), the story of what Putin's spies actually did do must not be true either. All her lies are easily disproven.

The only "hoax" is the firehose of Big Lies Trump has used for the last nine years in the attempt to cover up Putin's manuipulation. If anything, Brannan, Clapper and Comey did not do enough to stop Putin.

Imagine the roles being reversed: Clapper ordering an investigation of Gabbard! If Clapper had asked the Justice Department to prosecute of an innocent person -- let alone three of them -- he would have been impeached immediately. The difference, of course, is that Clapper isn't a Putin apologist who's spent years trying to cover up the Russian dictator's crimes. Gabbard is.

As head of Homeland Security, Secretary Noem is responsible for the training and conduct of the people who work in her department -- including everyone in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) As noted above, dozens of ICE officers are responsible for some of the most blatant abuses of power in recent American history. Since Trump and Noem took office, ICE officials have kidnapped, falsely imprisoned, and/or deported hundreds (if not thousands) of people -- tourists, undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and American citizens. Under Noem's DODO leadership, ICE has renditioned hundreds of legal residents to a maximum security prison in a third world dictatorship under false pretenses, with no proof, charge, council, trial, judge, or jury. With Noem's approval, ICE has defied court orders and violated the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the Bill of Attainder clause, the Ex Post Facto clause, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

Like the other members of his DODO cabinet, Trump nominated Noem to be DODO Homeland Security Secretary for one reason: she is blindly loyal to him. Noem doesn't know anything about our homeland, anything about security, or anything about the law. Noem isn't just unqualified. She's so ignorant about basic Constitutional rights that she'd be a laughingstock if she wasn't so dangerous.

For instance, in May, Senator Maggie Hassan asked Noem if she was familiar with Habeas Corpus. Noem replied that Habeas Corpus... is the exact opposite of what it really is.

Noem: "Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to--"
Hassan: "Let me stop you. Excuse me, that is incorrect... Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires the government to provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason... So, Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?"
Noem: "I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not."
Hassan: "It has never been done without approval of Congress."

The Writ of Habeas Corpus is a legal principle protecting innocent people from dictatorship. Noem thinks it's a tool dictators can use to oppress innocent people. If a Homeland Security Secretary under Obama or Biden had said that, they would have been impeached and removed immediately for gross incompetence.

In March, Noem traveled to CECOT prison and shot a propaganda video in front of a prison cell holding dozens of detainees who had been renditioned there without due process. "If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you can face," she said -- knowing full well that most of the people renditioned to CECOT prison had come to the United States legally and there was no proof that any of them were criminals. "This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people," Noem continued -- but there is no proof that anyone she renditioned there had committed any crimes, and Trump Administration lawyers have admitted that in at least one case they imprisoned the wrong man.

As Senator Cory Booker said, "When Trump reallocates all the resources within our immigration system to conducting the largest mass deportation of people in history, American citizens are paying the price... We pay the price because to do this, he is diverting actual law enforcement resources away from solving crimes and stopping terrorism. His actions are actually making us less safe."

Had a Homeland Security Secretary under Obama or Biden illegally detained or disappeared scores of innocent people visiting this country legally, illegally reditioned hundreds of legal permanent residents to a foreign prison without due process, and illegally deported four American children -- some of whom were being treated for serious illnesses -- they would have been impeached and removed from office immediately.

In May, three members of Congress -- accompanied by Mayor Ras Baraka -- arrived at an ICE detention facility outside Newark, New Jersey. It's perfectly legal for Congresswomen to inspect ICE prisons. DHS officials later claimed that the Congresswomen "stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility." The Congresswomen deny this, saying when they arrived, they requested entry peacefully and the ICE officials let them in without incident. It was only when they were leaving the facility that the ICE officers figured out that they were legally obligated to let the Congresswomen in, but that law didn't apply to the Mayor. So, ICE arrested the Mayor as the Congresswomen were leaving. Though the Mayor was released later that day, ICE later claimed the Congresswomen were violent -- something ICE's own video footage disproves. "Whether you are a civilian, a mayor, or a member of Congress, if you are storming an an ICE detention facility and putting law enforcement and detainees at risk, you can bet that we will arrest you and you will face the law," a DHS Assistant Secretary said. According to ICE's own video, nobody stormed anything, and no one was arrested until the party was leaving.

If a Homeland Security Department Assistant Secretary had threatened to arrest innocent members of Congress under false pretenses under the Obama or Biden administrations, that Assistant Secretary would have been impeached immediately, and Congress would have launched an impeachment investigation into the DHS director.

That wasn't the end of the story. As the Atlantic reported:

"Imagine if this series of events happened in a foreign country: A prosecutor who is most notable for being the president's former personal lawyer, and who is not legally confirmed to her role, charges a member of the opposition party with serious crimes based on trumped-up evidence, and then announces it not on a government platform but on the social-media site owned by the president's friend and major donor. What would outsiders conclude about the strength of democracy and rule of law in that country?

"Yesterday, interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced that she was charging Representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat whose district includes the city of Newark, with assaulting federal agents. McIver reportedly faces several criminal charges related to an incident at Delaney Hall, a privately operated immigrant-detention facility in Newark. Mayor Ras Baraka contends that the prison was operating without a certificate of occupancy, and city officials cited code violations. Baraka, who visited repeatedly and demanded access, was blocked from entering.

"On May 9, Baraka visited again, this time with three members of Congress, including McIver. He was initially invited through a gate but then asked to leave, which he did. After he’d stepped outside, federal agents pursued him on public property. A chaotic scrum followed, and Baraka was arrested. Although federal officials derided Baraka for a political stunt, this was a stunt of their own making, and the trespassing charge against Baraka never seemed likely to stick.

"Indeed, Habba dropped it yesterday and brought charges against McIver instead. You can watch the videos and decide for yourself—McIver is the one in the red blazer—but calling this an assault is a big stretch." [The videos are linked on the Atlantic's website.]

Meanwhile: Trump's "Justice Department has filed to dismiss cases against [January 6th] rioters, fired prosecutors involved in such cases, and pardoned some people sentenced to prison for their involvement, including those who injured police officers. This week, news emerged that the Justice Department is close to paying a $5 million settlement to the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman fatally shot by Capitol police while trying to storm the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol. These are not the actions of an administration with a serious commitment to defending federal law-enforcement officers."

Trump claimed for years that he wasn't being indicted, prosecuted, and convicted because he'd committed crimes -- many of which were well-documented -- but instead because the prosecutors disagreed with his politics. None of that was true, but that didn't stop the DODO Trump Administration from doing exactly what they'd condemned: prosecuting an innocent member of Congress for being part of the opposition party. Sign the petition demanding that the DODO Justice Department drop charges against Congresswoman McIver. The charges are a waste of taxpayer dollars. No jury would convict her.

Later -- when testifying under oath before Congress -- Noem slandered Kilmar Abrego Garcia by calling him a "terrorist" twice. As noted above, Trump Administration layers admitted weeks earlier that Abrego Garcia isn't a criminal and renditioning him to a maximum security prison in a third world country had been a mistake. If a Homeland Security Secretary under Obama or Biden had told lies about an innocent person under oath, they would have been impeached immediately for perjury.

In June, Noem was the face of the DODO ICE raids in Los Angeles (above.) She used her official position to violate the Hatch Act, urging Californians not to vote for Governor Gavin Newsom. (Newsom is term-limited and is ineligible to run for Governor again.)

At a later press conference, Noem declared: "We are staying here [in Los Angeles] to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this Governor Newsom and this mayor placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city." Obviously, it's not the role of ICE or a cabinet secretary to "liberate" a city from the elected Mayor or a State from the elected Governor.

Senator Alex Padilla was on his way to a Homeland Security briefing when he learned that Noem was holding a press conference in the same building. Padilla stopped by the press conference -- the same one where Noem pledged to "liberate this city from... this mayor." He heard Noem making this outrageous statement, raised his hand to ask her a question -- and was grabbed by Noem's security. He was then forced from the room, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed. Noem continued the press conference as if nothing was happening. Noem later said that Padilla didn't identify himself and "lunged" at her. The video -- which was made public immediately -- proves Noem is lying.

"If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country," Padilla said.

Padilla returned to the Senate floor a few days later. "Are we truly prepared to live in a country where the president can deploy the armed forces to decide which duly elected governors and mayors should be allowed to lead their constituents? Is that really the precedent that we're okay with?" he asked his colleagues. "If what you saw happen can happen when the cameras are on, imagine not only what can happen, but what is happening, in so many places where there are no cameras."

Noem and ICE lied about the Worchester raid, the arrest of Mayor Baraka, the handcuffing of Congressman Nadler's staffer, the detention of David Huerta, the attack on Senator Padilla, and the detention of Comptroller Lander -- and that's just the occasions documented on this web page. (A line-by-line analysis of Noem's public statements is beyond the scope of this article.) Noem and ICE have been caught slandering their U.S. citizen victims so many times -- with their lies routinely and instantly debunked by publicly available video -- that they clearly can't be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Noem thinks we're stupid, and has completely destroyed her credibility.

If Obama or Biden's Homeland Security Secretary's bodyguards had attacked an innocent United States Senator and then lied about it, they would have been fired immediately, and the Secretary would have been impeached the next day. Sign the petition demanding Noem's resignation.

In March, when asked about the illegal deportations, Tom Homan -- the DODO Trump Administration's "Border Czar" -- told Fox "News" that "We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think." Homan thinks he's above the law and doesn't have to obey court orders. He's wrong, and must be impeached and removed from office. If President Clinton's border czar, President Obama's border czar, or President Biden's border czar had admitted he had knowingly defied court orders and announced he was going to keep on doing it, he would have been impeached immediately.

In July, Homan told Fox "News" that "ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them. They just go through the observations, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions... it's not probable cause. It's reasonable suspicion."

Senator Alex Padilla responded:

"And there you have it.
"Under the Trump Administration, ICE and Border Patrol are being empowered to stop and question you based solely on how you look.
"No probable cause. No real reason. Just your 'physical appearance.'
"That's not justice - it's profiling."

This is the central philosophy of the entire DODO Trump Administration: fascism meets racism meets the power of the Federal government. For the second time, Homan admitted that he thinks ICE is above the law and doesn't have to follow the Constitution. Homan confirmed that ICE's directive is to assume people of color are criminals, then abduct, detain, and question people of color simply because they're people of color. With luck, ICE might discover that some of the detainees are undocumented immigrants! If the detainees are innocent, they'll just have to spend months in private prisons until a judge gets around to hearing the case and orders them released. Racial profiling -- assuming someone is likely to be a criminal because of their skin color -- is a violation of the Fourth Amendment (outlawing unreasonable searches and seizures, and requiring the government to provide probable cause); the Fifth Amendment (outlawing the government depriving someone of their liberty without due process), the Sixth Amendment (requiring the officers to inform detainees of the charges against them and to produce witnesses against them), and the Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing equal protection of the law to everyone in American jurisdiction.)

If a Clinton, Obama, or Biden Administration official had announced that they were using racial profiling to identify suspects, they would have been impeached immediately.

Less than a week later, DODO Homeland Security Secretary Noem denied that ICE is using racial profiling. "That's not true. And so that has been another false narrative that has been put out there in the media that I absolutely want to throw back at you and say that is absolutely false and don't you dare ever say that again. We have, um, judges out there and other individuals that say people have been targeted that way and it's not true. Every single operation that we do on ICE is based on investigative work and on case work to show that there is a reason and reasonable suspicion to go into an area and to talk and look at individuals that are involved in criminal activity. Um, so, because that is a narritive that people have been out there saying does not make it true and should not be repeated."

How do we reconcile these statements? Homan says that ICE is targeting people because of their appearance, and Noem says ICE isn't. They can't both be telling the truth. There are two possibilities here:

(1) Noem is telling the truth, and Homan is lying. There is no racial profiling going on at ICE. We can dismiss that possibility, because a thirty-second internet search will turn up dozens of videos of ICE engaged in racial profiling. (The cases of illegal ICE disappearances and detentions detailed above are just the tip of the iceberg.)

(2) Homan is is telling the truth, and Noem is lying. There IS racial profliling going on at ICE. We know that's true because of the overwhelming video evidence. So: there are two more possibilities here. Noem is either a fool (she didn't know she was lying) or a liar (she knew perfectly well she was lying.)

(a) Noem's a fool. She honestly believes that ICE isn't using racial profiling. That means Homan has gone rogue. He's running an illegal and unconstitutional racial profiling operation in broad daylight under Homan's nose that blatantly denies American citizens, legal residents, and tourists their basic Constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Noem has no idea what's been going on in her department for months and has been asleep at the wheel for her entire tenure as Homeland Security Secretary. If this is the case, Homan must be fired immediately and prosecuted for running a massive conspiracy to commit kidnapping, false imprisonment, contempt of court, and criminally negligent homicide. Since Noem hasn't fired Homan, there is only one other possibility.

(b) Noem's a liar. She's incompetent, but she's not that incompetent. She's openly using the fascist propaganda tactic of the Big Lie. She denied what everyone in the world has seen happening with their own eyes for months, and then denounced a reporter for asking her about it. Just like Hitler used a Big Lie to blame innocent Jewish people for Germany losing World War I, Noem is using a Big Lie to pretend that ICE is only targeting criminals -- when the reality is that they're targeting innocent people based on "their location, their occupation, their physical appearance."

Congressman Mike Johnson said that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be attacked by a criminal mob -- for asking a court to uphold the law. "I'm not gonna give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested. But he ought to be tarred and feathered," Johnson said.

When a victim was "tarred and feathered," they were subjected to severe (and sometimes fatal) torture, with no charge, counsel, trial, judge, or jury. The mobs committed conspiracy, kidnapping, assault, and attempted murder. In Washington, DC, it's illegal to incite others to commit a crime.

Johnson is not a member of the Cabinet and cannot be impeached. However, Congress can (and must) expel him from the House of Representatives. In comparison, Johnson's predecessor as Speaker of the House -- Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi -- was regularly villified by Republicans who disagreed with her politics. In 2022, she escaped an assassination attempt. Imagine how the Republicans who loathed Pelosi for disagreeing with them would have reacted if she had actually done something illegal -- like calling for a Republican governor to be tarred and feathered. A vote to expel her from Congress would have taken place immediately.

Legacy Links: [But Today, I Confess: Political Satire in Verse] | [Obamawatch] | [The Legacy of George W. Bush]