California-born designer Willy Chavarria used his Spring/Summer 2026 show at Paris Men’s Fashion Week last month as a powerful protest against the dehumanizing treatment and forced deportation of immigrants in his home state and beyond.
Held at the historic Salle Pleyel, the show opened with 35 men in stark white T-shirts — created in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)— a reference to mass incarceration and recent ICE raids under Trump-era immigration rhetoric.
The tees were not just symbolic. They were a direct statement against the dehumanization of immigrants in the U.S., with tags that read: “The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union – beyond one person, party, or side.” Chavarria, who has long worked with the ACLU, used the platform to amplify the organization’s message and spotlight the communities most under threat.
Known for blending activism and elegance, Chavarria called the collection “HURON” — a nod to his hometown in California’s Central Valley, where many immigrant laborers live and work. “I’m not interested in luxury as a symbol of privilege,” he said of the move. “I’m interested in luxury as a symbol of truth in one’s own character.”
For more on Willy Chavarria's fashion, visit his site and check out the video below.
Horror stories. In Houston, US citizen Miguel Angel Ponce Jr. is attempting to drive from his home to work when ICE assaults him.
"He says, 'I need to see your ID.' I gave him the ID. When I went back down, he said, 'Get out of the car,'" Ponce said.
"For what?" Ponce said he asked. "'Get out.'"
He says officers then handcuffed him and took him away.
"I pretty much felt kidnapped. [They] told me I have a deportation order, put me in handcuffs, took me to another location. I couldn't call my wife — locked up in the back seat."
Despite showing his ID and insisting he was born in the U.S., Ponce says the officers continued to insist he was someone with immigration violations.
"[He] said, 'You've had an encounter with ICE.' I said, 'No, I've never...' At that point, he slapped handcuffs on me. They're like, 'You have an order of deportation.' That is crazy — because I was born here. I was born in College Station. 'No, you're the one I'm looking for.'"
Mistakes happen? Mistakes happen a lot with ICE and that's because (a) they don't know their job and (b) they don't the law -- which is also part of their job. Margaret Kadifa (MOTHER JONES) reports another horror story:
Three asylum seekers leaving routine court hearings at San Francisco immigration court Thursday morning were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, including one man who a judge had just said might be mentally impaired.
They’re the latest in a series of ICE actions, where over 30 immigrants have been arrested by federal agents while leaving San Francisco immigration court, at 100 Montgomery Street or 630 Sansome Street—which also has an ICE field office and is where Thursday’s arrests took place.
After a Department of Homeland Security attorney on Thursday moved to dismiss the case of the man, a strategy federal attorneys have recently been using to make asylum seekers easier to remove, immigration judge Patrick O’Brien raised doubts over his mental ability, saying, “it’s obvious to me that there are competency issues.”
The man—who was only fluent in Mam, a Mayan language primarily spoken in Guatemala—had been muttering to himself throughout the morning, O’Brien said.
Later in court, the man was unable to tell O’Brien his address. O’Brien even asked the man at one point if he was on medication.
There appear to be competency issues beyond just a language barrier, O’Brien said. (After a few hours of requesting one, the court had been able to find a remote Mam interpreter to help with the man’s hearing.)
O’Brien then proceeded to ask the Department of Homeland Security attorney for a continuance of the case, rather than a dismissal, due to the man’s possible mental incompetence. The man needed time to find a lawyer and other support, O’Brien said. “He’s clearly not understanding the questions,” O’Brien said. “Is this someone the department really wants to move to dismiss a motion to appear on?”
The DHS attorney agreed, and allowed for a continuance of the case, which essentially means the man will come back for another hearing in a few months. The DHS attorney said she could “renew” the motion to dismiss another time.
But as the man left the hearing room, Mission Local observed about five ICE officers stopping the man and then leading him out a side door. The man’s arrest was the third over the course of three hours Thursday morning.
Arrested on the way out of the court house? It's happening over and over across the country. Alexandra Villarreal (GUARDIAN) reports:
Jerome traveled a thousand miles from California to El Paso, Texas, so he could accompany Jenny to her immigration hearing. He and his wife had promised to take her after she had fled Cuba last December, after the government there had targeted her because she had reported on the country’s deplorable conditions for her college radio station.
Everything should have been fine. Jenny, 25, had entered the United States legally under one of Joe Biden’s now-defunct programs, CBP One. By the end of the year, she could apply for a green card.
But a few days before her hearing, Jerome started to feel like something was off. Jenny’s court date had been abruptly moved from May to June with no explanation. Arrests at immigration courthouses peppered the news.
And when Jenny went before the court, the government attorney assigned to try to deport her asked the judge to dismiss her case, arguing vaguely that circumstances had changed.
Instead, the judge noted that Jenny was pursuing an asylum claim and scheduled her for another court date in August 2026 – the best possible outcome.
“She turned around and looked at me and smiled. And I smiled back, because she understood that she was free to go home,” Jerome said.
But as Jenny left the courtroom and approached the elevator to leave, a crowd of government agents in masks converged on her and demanded she go with them. Just before she disappeared down a corridor with the phalanx of officers, she turned back to look at Jerome, her face stricken, silently pleading with him to do something.
“I said, ‘She’s legal. She’s here legally. And you guys just don’t care, do you? Nobody cares about this. You guys just like pulling people away like this,’” Jerome recalled telling the agents. “And nobody said a word. They couldn’t even look me in the eye,” he told the Guardian.
No, they couldn't look anyone in the eye. They're cowards who are breaking the law and they live in shame so they hide behind masks. PASADENA NOW covers yet another one:
Federal immigration officials have detained the husband of Huntington Hospital’s Chief of Medical Staff in downtown Los Angeles, where he has allegedly endured nearly two weeks of harsh treatment and insufficient medical care, according to a civil rights group’s statement released Thursday evening.
Tunisian immigrant Rami Othmane was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on July 13 while driving to a grocery store, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said. His wife, Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, who oversees more than 1,000 physicians associated with Huntington Hospital, claims immigration officers blocked her husband’s car, did not present a warrant, and failed to identify themselves during the encounter.
Othmane suffers from chronic pain and an untreated tumor and is reportedly being held under inhumane conditions at a federal facility in downtown Los Angeles, NDLON said.
“He is not a criminal,” Alrashid was quoted in the group’s statement as saying. “He is a kind, peaceful man with an open immigration petition. He should be with his family, not sleeping on a concrete floor without medical care.”
The family filed an I-130 Petition for Alien Relative on June 12, initiating a legal pathway toward permanent residency. The petition remains pending, according to the advocacy group.
Jasmine Mendez (LOS ANGELES TIMES) adds:
Rami Othmane was held July 13 while driving to the grocery store. His wife, Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, said agents blocked Othmane’s car and did not identify themselves or present a warrant before detaining him.
Alrashid, chief of medical staff at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, was on FaceTime with her husband during the incident. The couple married on March 5, 2024, and filed an I-130 petition last month to qualify their relationship status to obtain Orthmane’s green card.
[. . .]
“This is not just an immigration issue — this is a human rights crisis,” Alrashid said in a statement. “My husband has been subjected to 12 days of inhumane treatment in a federal building. He is not a criminal. He is a kind, peaceful man with an open immigration petition.”
Remember when the big lie was told that only violent criminals would be targeted? Alicia Victoria Lozano (NBC NEWS) notes:
Immigration officials have been repeatedly spotted outside a Hollywood homeless shelter since May, leading staff to accompany residents from war-torn countries to work, errands and court.
An executive at the shelter that serves people ages 18 to 24 said she saw two Venezuelan men handcuffed and arrested by ICE agents after they returned to the shelter from work.
“There was no conversation,” said the employee, Lailanie, who asked that her last name not be used because she feared retribution from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
She said about half a dozen immigration officers went up to the residents “and put their hands behind their backs right away.”
Homeless shelters appear to be another target in the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown, which has resulted in nearly 3,000 arrests in the Los Angeles area. They now join Home Depots, 7-Elevens and cannabis farms as locations where the federal government is carrying out its mass deportation effort.
In addition to the Hollywood shelter, service providers have reported seeing immigration enforcement at shelters in North Hollywood and San Diego, according to local media.
Chump Land is one horror story after another. And it's tanking him in the polls. Diamond Walker and Valentina Palm (PALM BEACH POST) report:
Kenny Laynez's cellphone camera captured every undocumented immigrant’s nightmare on video when it happened to him on the morning of May 2. One problem: He is a U.S. citizen. Here's more to know about what happened.
Kenny Laynez, a U.S. citizen, was driving with his mother and coworkers to their landscaping jobs when they were pulled over on Singer Island by Florida Highway Patrol and Border Patrol agents. Officers dragged them from the car, grabbing necks, twisting arms, using a Taser, and later joked about raises and promotions.
Laynez, who was born and raised in West Palm Beach, was held for six hours at a federal facility in Riviera Beach before being released. His mom, who is Guatemalan and has legal status in this country, was not detained. His coworkers were taken to the Krome Detention Center in Miami and later released on bail.
“I have rights. I was born and raised here," Laynez told the officers, according to a copy of the video shared by the Guatemalan-Maya Center of Lake Worth Beach.
"You don’t have any rights here. You are a ‘Migo,’ brother,” said the officer, who hurried him into a van. "Migo" is short for "amigo," the Spanish word for "friend, " an apparent reference to Laynez's ethnicity.
You don't have any rights here?
At POLITICO, Joshua Zeitz contributes an essay which opens:
President Donald Trump and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller set a goal of deporting 1 million undocumented immigrants each year — a staggering number that would require a massive expansion of immigration enforcement. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” delivered just that, throwing roughly $170 billion to the administration’s immigration restriction program, including $45 billion for new detention centers and $30 billion to hire 10,000 new ICE officers. ICE will now become the largest law enforcement agency in the country.
Anti-immigration hardliners view it as a major victory. But as ICE transforms into a massive, un-uniformed, masked domestic army — one that critics fear will have carte blanche to arrest, detain and deport persons without cause or due process, whether they enjoy legal status or not — there’s reason to believe it could backfire.
Think what you will of the administration’s immigration agenda, but there is little denying that mass deportations on the scale that Trump and Miller envision will necessarily require brute displays of force that may shock the public conscience, even among people who theoretically support the broader goals.
We’ve already seen signs of what’s to come. Like when, according to eyewitness accounts, around 30 heavily armed ICE agents raided Buona Forchetta, a family-owned Italian restaurant in San Diego’s South Park, handcuffing four immigrant workers and using flash‑bang grenades against civilians. Or the scene in Los Angeles earlier this summer, where the administration deployed guardsmen and active-duty military and ICE arrested over 1,600 persons, including workers at car washes and farms — even people making lawful appearances in immigration court. Or the case of Carol Mayorga, a Hong Kong-born waitress and mother of three whom ICE seized during what she believed was a routine document renewal appointment in late April, triggering her rural Missouri community, largely supportive of Trump, to rally with petitions, fundraisers and public protests that ultimately led to her release in early June.
These displays of force and excess help explain why the American public, which broadly approved of Trump’s tough stance on immigration during the 2024 election, is shifting the other way. A recent CNN poll shows 55 percent think Trump has gone too far in his pursuit of undocumented immigrants, up 10 percent since February. And as raids ramp up across the country, the gap between Trump’s rhetoric about rounding up “terrorists” and “gang members” and the reality of deporting normal, everyday people who are upstanding members of their communities will only grow starker.
As the truth grows starker, the candy asses of ICE get ever more precious. Beau Yarbrough (INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLTIN) reports the Baby Girls of ICE called the police because someone poured a coffee on their windshield -- and to make sure the police would come quick, they lied about coffee also being thrown in their face:
Ontario police officers who were at the scene of an immigration enforcement operation at a local grocery store this week were responding to a call for help from federal agents, the department explained in a video released days after the incident.
The assault on the agents, according to a video released by the department Thursday, July 24, appears to have been someone pouring a cup of coffee on an unmarked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle.
Oh, the horror! No wonder the little ICE agents wet their panties and called the cops. Coffee on a windshield!!!! The horror. Have you ever seen a a bigger group of candy asses in your lives?
Jacob Crosse (WSWS) notes Chump's crimes and his War Crimes:
Far from arresting “bad guys,” the Trump administration and the immigration police have overwhelmingly targeted immigrants whose only “crime” was applying for asylum in the US. One of the more criminal acts carried out by the second Trump administration was the deportation of roughly 250 Venezuelan men and dozens of Salvadorans without due process to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in mid-March.
Trump illegally invoked the Aliens Enemies Act to deny the men their rights and falsely claimed they were members of the gang “Tren de Aragua.” On July 18, four months after the men were sent to the notorious prison in violation of court orders, a prisoner exchange took place between the US government and Venezuela which saw the release of 10 Americans or US permanent residents and the release to Venezuela of the Venezuelan migrants sent to CECOT.
Now that the men have been released, many are speaking out on the horrific treatment they received. Andry Hernández Romero, 32, a gay makeup artist sent to CECOT for having tattoos that paid tribute to his mother and father, told local outlets in Venezuela, “It was an encounter with torture and death.”
Romero legally entered the US in 2024 and had already passed a credible fear interview when he was detained by ICE. Despite having no criminal record, Romero was deported to CECOT.
“Many of our fellows have wounds from the nightsticks; they have fractured ribs, fractured fingers and toes, marks from the handcuffs,” Romero said in a report from Reuters.
Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, a former professional soccer player, was also illegally detained and deported to CECOT under false charges that he was a gang member under the Alien Enemies Act. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Barrios said guards greeted him and others: “Welcome to El Salvador, you sons of bitches. You’ve arrived at the Terrorist Confinement Center. Hell on earth.”
Food and bedding was insufficient, and the water was contaminated, Barrios told the paper. He said he and others were regularly beaten. “There was blood, vomit and people passed out on the floor.”
As was the case with Romero, Barrios has never been charged with a crime. He was “identified” as a gang member because he had a tattoo, but the tattoo celebrated his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.
The US government has yet to provide a comprehensive list of everyone it illegally deported to CECOT, but Bloomberg reported in April that as many as 90 percent of those deported to the torture prison had no criminal record.
The following sites updated:
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DHS’s Endless Trolling17 hours ago
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Talking With Henry Farrell20 hours ago
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Idiot of the Week1 day ago
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Chump and other con artists1 day ago
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Radish Salad in the Kitchen1 day ago
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