“Do you know how insane it is trying to teach my officers to screen applicants for harm under the Convention Against Torture while our government is actually inflicting severe mental harm and anguish upon them — which is torture!”
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
NEW: Nearly a dozen immigrants arrested by ICE were kept in solitary confinement for more than 2 months, including 2 people who were isolated for more than 300 days, according to a draft Department of Homeland Security IG report obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Inspectors said there had been no documented review to evaluate the continued solitary confinement and the immigrants were not afforded recreation time for an hour a day, as required.
The inspectors also said the detainees received inadequate medical checks.
From the draft report:
“Moreover, detainees in administrative segregation were restricted to their individual cells for approximately 22 to 23 hours a day without access to the same group activities or opportunities as those in the general population.”
I spoke with James Schwab, a former ICE spokesman, who said that under the Trump admin, ICE was “about being anti-immigrant and every statement we made, every minute that we spent on our statements, were about showing how immigrants have negatively influenced our country.”
“The whole agency changed a lot,” said one former lead ICE detention official who worked under both Obama and Trump.
“It felt uncontrolled.”
She added that many in the agency were elated when Trump came in.
NEW: ICE investigators issued a subpoena this week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources — an extraordinary attempt by the government to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment.
The subpoena appears to be an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to track down the identities of people who provide information to news outlets.
"BuzzFeed News emphatically rejects any requests for information about possible sources and methods of our reporting,” said BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Mark Schoofs.
NEW: Following a @BuzzFeedNews story documenting how ICE expelled 30+ unaccompanied children back to Guatemala after a federal judge blocked the controversial practice, ICE explains its side of the story in federal court to Judge Emmit Sullivan.
The filing confirms key facts.
The flight took off 10 minutes after the ruling & ICE officials left the children in Guatemala.
ICE officials say that their personnel on the ground were not aware of the injunction until after the children had been handed over to Guatemalan authorities.
NEW: The election of Joe Biden has been met with relief among many DHS employees who had been worried that Trump had done long-term damage to the agency’s reputation & feared what would come in a second term.
During his four years in office, Trump redefined the role of the Department of Homeland Security while instituting a series of restrictive measures unlike administrations before him.
Many DHS employees believed the agency had begun acting like an arm of the Trump campaign, as senior officials mimicked political talking points and declared that cities like Portland were “under siege.”