That the Biden administration is even considering reviving family detention is a travesty. And he should expect Japanese American survivors and descendants of the WWII incarceration camps to hold him to account for this. /1 nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/… As I wrote back in 2015, no summer-camp-inspired euphemisms could hide the fact that trying to build child-friendly prison camps merely repeats the inhumanity that the U.S. government inflicted on Japanese-American families during World War II. /2 themarshallproject.org/2015/05/21/the…

In plain words, the SCOTUS decision today in Egbert v. Boule immunizes border agents from liability for violating the Constitution. It also foreshadows similar immunity for all federal agents. This is a lawless, dangerous decision that makes the Bill of Rights a dead letter. /1 Justice Sotomayor's dissent makes the stakes here quite plain. /2

.@IJ and @ACLU @ACLUTx filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit today to address a deeply concerning ruling in a police practices case.

Here's a thread about it. ij.org/wp-content/upl… /1 Several years ago, in Fort Worth, TX, a white man named Itamar Vardi called the police to complain that a group of people were on his property arguing, had refused to leave, and were throwing trash in his yard. /2

In the past year, I've seen a lot of articles like this one from Goshen, Indiana, describing how another small police department is spending tens of thousands of dollars to contract with Lexipol, a for-profit company that writes police policy manuals. news.yahoo.com/major-gpd-poli… /1 The articles always have bland quotes like this from city officials, saying that the contract is "worth it" despite the expense, because it helps the police department to stay "up-to-date" with new laws. /2

Today's news about SCOTUS and the Asian American plaintiffs in the Harvard admissions case makes me think about the 19th and early 20th century history of Asian Americans in the courts, and our community responses to white supremacy. /1 The question for Asian American communities today is much the same as it was a hundred years ago: Do we try to save ourselves by aligning ourselves with whiteness? Or do we build solidarity with other groups who are also being targeted by white supremacy? /2

Today @npr repeated the same alarmist cop talking points about a "police pullback" being responsible for the increase in murders in 2020. npr.org/2021/09/26/104…

Some history and context to remember as these news stories proliferate: /1

https://twitter.com/carltakei/status/1442555707388170240

Richard Rosenfeld, who is the sole source relied on in the NPR piece, was one of a very small number of academics who, in 2014, embraced the St. Louis police chief's unsupported assertions about what he called "the Ferguson effect." /2

This article was incredibly frustrating to read because—as so many (predominantly white, predominantly male) generalists commenting on policing and criminal legal system issues do—@conor64 got things half-right, and then ran with the wrong half. /1

https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1424360330608664580

He's right that police generally do a shitty job of clearing homicide cases—especially those with Black victims—and that this causes righteous pain and anger in Black communities.

He's also right that stop-and-frisk and the War on Drugs are indefensible and should end. /2

I just want to add more detail here: The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act first came about because millions of people were marching in the streets against police abuse—with many waving handmade cardboard protest signs that explicitly stated "End Qualified Immunity." /1

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1413273463939289092

But lately, things in Congress have taken a troubling turn.

Negotiations over the bill have been obstructed by a small number of law enforcement groups demanding the opposite: insulating officers from accountability when they violate the law. /2

As both a longtime @ACLU attorney and a near-absolutist on free speech who works on policing and racial justice, the bait-and-switch here really frustrates me. The article is nominally about free speech, but it's really about the reporter's hostility to racial justice work. /1

https://twitter.com/powellnyt/status/1401596961430573061

Take, for instance, this sentence in an early graf.

Notably, the article contains ZERO examples of First Amendment work substantively conflicting with any of these organizational stances—because, in the end, no serious conflict exists. /2

Horrifying new 5th Circuit decision: Police officers tased Gabriel Eduardo Olivas while he was suicidal and soaked in gasoline. This set him on fire, burning him to death and burning down his house.

The court held the officers' actions were lawful. /1 ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub… This began when Mr. Olivas' son called 911, reporting that his father was threatening to kill himself and burn down the house. Five police officers responded. /2

THREAD: I've been seeing lots of articles and tweets about the risk of a new COVID-19 spike due to #BlackLivesMatter protests. But they're getting causation wrong.

The likely cause of this spike won't be the protests themselves--it's the police responses to those protests. /1 Yes, being around other people creates some elevated risk, potentially mitigated by being outdoors. But what public health experts have repeatedly emphasized is that the greatest risks come from proximity and crowding, coughing, and indoor spaces. vox.com/2020/5/22/2126… /2

THREAD: Today, Feb. 19, is the anniversary of #EO9066, FDR's executive order that authorized the mass roundup and incarceration of Japanese Americans--including my family.

Across the country, Japanese Americans commemorate this as the #DayOfRemembrance. /1 To read about how #EO9066 impacted my own family, you can read this piece that I wrote in 2017 for the Smithsonian @amhistorymuseum. /2 americanhistory.si.edu/blog/carl-take…

Today, @ACLU and a cross-ideological coalition of @IJ @theCCR @civilrightsorg & @NPAP_NLG filed an amicus brief in Torres v. Madrid. This case will determine whether police are unbound by the Constitution when they use force against people who then resist or flee. /1 In this case, Roxanne Torres was sitting inside her car in a parking lot in the early morning, when it was still dark, with the doors locked and engine running. Two police officers (who were looking for someone else) approached with guns out and tried to open her locked door. /2

With all of the news about Iranian Americans being held and interrogated at the U.S.-Canada border, my thoughts keep turning to the 30-page "Alien Enemy Questionnaire" that my great-grandfather, Juro Shiga, was required to fill out after the FBI arrested him in January 1942. /1 Juro had lived in the U.S. for 37 years, and had owned a dry goods business in Seattle for the past 26 years.

Because then-existing immigration laws prohibited Japanese immigrants from becoming citizens, he never applied to naturalize as a U.S. citizen. /2

THREAD: It’s both profoundly offensive and oddly appropriate that the Center for Immigration Studies (widely known as a racist, anti-immigrant org) picked this week to launch a PR effort claiming that family detention doesn’t cause suffering or deprive anyone of civil rights. /1 The timing of CIS’s effort to whitewash family detention is especially offensive because today, Feb. 19, is the #DayOfRemembrance, when Japanese Americans mark the anniversary of #EO9066, the executive order authorizing the mass roundup and detention of Japanese Americans. /2