Ryan Devereaux Profile picture
Journalist. Writing a book with @AvidReaderPress. Fellow @typemediacenter. Contact: ryan.devereaux@proton.me.
Oct 29, 2022 25 tweets 7 min read
This week AZ Gov. Doug Ducey began dropping thousands of multi-ton shipping containers in Coronado National Forest to construct an ad hoc border wall in defiance of federal authorities.

I visited the site w/ @PeccaryNotPig and wrote about the effort here: theintercept.com/2022/10/29/ari… It’s easy to write this off as purely a midterms political stunt. The timing and politics are obvious, but it’s worth digging a bit into exactly what’s happening here (apologies in advance, this is going to be a long thread).

theintercept.com/2022/10/29/ari…
Sep 29, 2022 13 tweets 4 min read
A West Texas jail warden and his twin brother are under arrest for allegedly driving up to a group of migrants at a water tank then fatally shooting one of the migrants in the head and wounding another nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/… NEW: Texas jail warden charged with killing migrant was previously accused of serious abuses

The warden who was arrested yesterday and the jail he ran have a long dark history — read more here interc.pt/3dRdI8k
Jul 20, 2022 9 tweets 2 min read
Last winter, I began looking into a historic wolf hunt on the northern border of Yellowstone National Park.

Nearly eight months later, here’s the end result. The wildest story I’ve ever reported. theintercept.com/2022/07/20/wol… The news: the last Yellowstone wolf to die in the deadliest hunt the park has seen in a century was killed by one of the park’s veteran backcountry rangers, setting off two ongoing investigations into allegations that law enforcement colluded with hunters to kill wolves.
Sep 21, 2021 13 tweets 5 min read
NEW: The scale and speed of the Biden's current effort to expel Haitian asylum seekers en masse is without comparison in recent history.

The utter absence of infrastructure and resources to support those being removed cannot be overstated. theintercept.com/2021/09/21/bid… Haitian officials say they simply cannot manage the influx — the most removals the country has received from the US in past seven years was 1,000 individuals.

Right now, the Border Patrol is "working around the clock" to expel more than 12,000 people in a week.
Sep 18, 2021 18 tweets 5 min read
Thinking today about Nabeela ur Rehman and her brother Zubair. We met in 2013. Nabeela was 9. Zubair was 13. Along with their father Rafiq, they were the first victims of a US drone strike to meet with members of Congress. I was the first reporter they spoke to in the states. Nabeela’s grandmother, Momina Bibi, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in 2012. The family’s unprecedented visit was the result of an extraordinary effort to bring American lawmakers face-to-face with the consequences of unaccountable US policy.
Jul 24, 2021 10 tweets 4 min read
This week, Daniel Hale, a former intelligence analyst facing more than a decade in prison for leaking documents on the US drone program, filed an 11-page letter laying out the reasons for his actions.

It is breathtaking document, worth reading in full. theintercept.com/2021/07/24/dan… Hale pleaded guilty in March. The government, seeking the max sentence in the case, has strongly implied that he was the source of a series stories for The Intercept — The Intercept, as a matter of policy, does not comment on matters relating to the identity of anonymous sources.
Apr 14, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
A dispatch from Ajo, Arizona — an unincorporated community w/ no hospital, no local government, in the heart of the desert — where the Border Patrol is dropping asylum seekers and volunteers are struggling to respond.

My latest w/ photos by @ashponders. theintercept.com/2021/04/14/bor… We first reported on these rural drop offs last month.

See here: theintercept.com/2021/03/26/bor…

Today's piece looks at how the releases are unfolding on the ground.
Jan 31, 2021 16 tweets 6 min read
Good to see the paper of record highlighting this important national news story that we’ve been covering at @theintercept for the past eight months.

Going to provide some links and info for those who might be interested in reading more on the topic. nytimes.com/2021/01/30/us/… In June, a trove of hacked law enforcement documents was posted online. I went through hundreds of those files to look at how law enforcement was treating antifa/anarchists vs groups on the far right.
Jan 13, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
There is a substantial migration from Parler to Telegram underway right now and paramilitary far-right accelerationists are attempting to capitalize on the moment to radicalize what they consider “normie” Trump supporters — here’s what we know so far theintercept.com/2021/01/12/boo… A “Parler life boat” channel is fast approaching 16,000 subscribers and as researcher @MeganSquire0 has noted, a Proud Boys channel attracted nearly 6,000 users in four hours over the weekend — Telegram says more than 25 million people have joined the app in the past 72 hours
Jul 15, 2020 15 tweets 4 min read
NEW: an analysis of hundreds of leaked documents reveals that while the president and the attorney general clamored for a crackdown on antifa, law enforcement was sharing detailed reports of threats from far-right extremists to protesters and cops theintercept.com/2020/07/15/geo… These materials are part of an enormous trove of documents that were recently hacked and posted online.

More on that from @micahflee here. theintercept.com/2020/07/15/blu…
Jun 23, 2020 7 tweets 2 min read
Just had a conversation with a young guy in Crown Heights about the fireworks situation in Brooklyn that might be helpful to folks trying to understand what’s happening — the source is a lifelong resident whose block has been featured in at least one viral fireworks video. The supply chain is pretty simple. There’s a widespread understanding that you can buy fireworks on the cheap right now from neighboring states, so folks are carpooling to those states to make those purchases, coming back and selling fireworks at higher prices.
Jun 6, 2020 18 tweets 7 min read
Happening now: following NYC officials @bradlander, @JumaaneWilliams and @KeithPowersNYC as they attempt to access holding cells in Manhattan — legal advocates say many of 2,500 people arrested in the last week are disappearing in a system rife with unsafe conditions .@bradlander is knocking on the backdoor here at 100 Centre Street — no answer. Officials are invoking a city charter that empowers them to inspect jail cells
Jun 5, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
The NYC curfew is not about public safety — it is a pretext for police to arrest people when they otherwise would have no justification to do so.

Some of those people are now being handed off to FBI agents for interrogations about their political views. theintercept.com/2020/06/04/fbi… Just this week, four men who were arrested in Brooklyn for curfew violations were questioned by the NYPD and FBI about their involvement in protests against police violence.

"We want to know who’s hijacking your movement and making it violent," an FBI agent told one of the men.
Feb 6, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
NEW: Trump is blowing up a national monument in Arizona to make way for the border wall interc.pt/2Uwec7Z This week, government contractors began blowing apart a mountain on protected lands in southern Arizona to make way for the border wall.

The project is expected to last a month. Sacred Native American cultural sites are under threat. theintercept.com/2020/02/06/bor…
Feb 4, 2020 5 tweets 3 min read
NEW: a federal judge has reversed the convictions of four humanitarian aid volunteers in Arizona, ruling that the government embraced a “gruesome logic” that criminalizes “interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death.” theintercept.com/2020/02/04/rev… Judge Rosemary Márquez's opinion is worth reading in full but this is the arguably the key passage — a damning critique of the core argument prosecutors have used to criminalize the provision of humanitarian aid for decades.

documentcloud.org/documents/6763…
Jul 12, 2019 4 tweets 3 min read
NEW: Border Patrol chief Carla Provost was a member of secret Facebook group interc.pt/2G8AxAs The chief was the most senior of Border Patrol supervisors we identified in the group — others included chief patrol agents overseeing whole sectors, agents overseeing individual stations and union officials who have enjoyed direct access to the president theintercept.com/2019/07/12/bor…
Jul 5, 2019 13 tweets 5 min read
NEW: Border Patrol agents tried to delete racist and obscene Facebook posts. We archived them. interc.pt/2JsH8Gx Some background on the secret Border Patrol Facebook group story.

On Monday, @acinvestigates/@propublica published this blockbuster, revealing that the group “I’m 10-15” joked about migrant deaths and posted sexist memes, including some directed at @AOC propublica.org/article/secret…
May 29, 2019 20 tweets 7 min read
Today, Scott Warren, an Arizona humanitarian aid volunteer, goes to trial to face felony charges for allegedly allowing two undocumented migrants access to food, water and a place to sleep in 2018.

He faces up to 20 years in prison. My report on his case. theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-… On the eve of his trial, Warren published an op-ed highlighting the alarming precedent his conviction, resting on broad interpretations of federal harboring and smuggling statutes, could set for “millions of mixed-status families in the United States.”

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…
May 4, 2019 12 tweets 5 min read
Thousands of migrants have died in Arizona's desert. I spent a year reporting on aid volunteers whose efforts to save lives put them in the government’s crosshairs.

One, Scott Warren, faces 20 years in prison — he’s telling his story for the first time. theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-… This account is based on hours of conversation with Warren, a year’s worth of court filings, hundreds of pages of internal government communications, numerous trips into the Sonoran Desert and interviews with priests, anarchists, former Border Patrol agents and many others.
Jun 14, 2018 31 tweets 7 min read
Greetings from Tucson. A few points about this piece — it’s long so I’ll try to summarize.

There’s a lot happening on the border. What all of this will look like by the end of the summer remains to be seen, but the upshot is this: the future looks grim theintercept.com/2018/06/12/bor… The government is currently breaking apart families by the hundreds on a weekly basis.

Kids who came to the US with their parents are being turned “unaccompanied” in the eyes of the state.

There’s talk of sending these kids, thousands of them, to camps on US military bases.