Let's start with this from Senator Alex Padilla's office:
Padilla: “I love this country so much, I will call out anybody abusing their power to undermine those fundamental rights, especially when it’s the President of the United States.”
Photo: Scott Kowalchyk ©2025 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NEW YORK, NY — In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, joined The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to call out the Trump Administration’s cruel, unpopular mass deportation agenda, including indiscriminate immigration enforcement and the unprecedented militarization of Los Angeles in response to overwhelmingly peaceful protests.
Padilla highlighted his efforts to fight back against the Administration’s anti-immigrant actions stoking fear in communities across America, while offering a better path forward for modernizing the United States’ outdated immigration system, including his bill to update the existing Registry statute to expand a pathway to lawful permanent residency for millions of long-term U.S. residents.
Padilla also discussed his forcible removal from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s press conference in June, where he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed after attempting to ask a question, as well as Vice President J.D. Vance’s inflammatory comments referring to him as “José.”
Watch Senator Padilla’s full interview with Stephen Colbert here.
Key Excerpts:
On his violent detainment at a Department of Homeland Security press conference and the Trump Administration’s cruel immigration enforcement
- “Look, what happened to me happened to me, but it’s not about me. I think about what this Administration is doing to so many people across the country, but especially in California right now, with the obsession they have with this mass deportation agenda, when the reality is — and we know this from ICE statistics — the vast majority of people being arrested, being detained, being deported are the same people that so many families trust to care for our children, trust to care for aging parents. You know, they’re the people who are preparing and serving meals in restaurants, that are picking the fruit and vegetables and packaging the meat in factories that we depend on to put food at the table at home.”
- “When the whole public sees the father of three United States Marines being abused and detained, when the country learns about not just, I mean, legal residents and even United States citizens being caught up in these roundups, and when a farm worker falls to his death during an ICE raid, this Administration has gone too far. And I spoke up that day, and I’ll continue to speak up, and I’m going to continue to speak up until it comes around.”
On J.D. Vance referring to him as “José Padilla”
- “He’s the president of the United States Senate today by way of being Vice President. He served in the Senate for two years. We overlapped. He knows my name, but if he wants to try to mock and attack by calling me a José, I’ll tell you this: I’m proud to be a José because this Administration will use the term José and Maria to try to villainize immigrants, and it’s wrong. So to all the José’s and Marias out there who are contributing to the economy and working hard, building communities, we’re going to continue to stand up and rise up.”
On the Trump Administration’s deployment of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles
- “Most of the Marines have finally been withdrawn. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Not only was it not helpful, it was actually counterproductive. But of course, Donald Trump just wants the spectacle. He’s trying to escalate tensions whenever he can.”
- “Most of the National Guard troops are gone, but that being said, look, the fear is still there. The terror is still there. It’s palpable. I don’t just hear from constituents — I hear from friends, I hear from family, because the reality is this about their mass deportation operation. They’d like to talk about targeting violent criminals. When you’re going to workplaces to round up immigrants, it’s not because they’re not working. If they’re combing through IRS data to try to find where immigrants are, it’s not about immigrants not paying taxes. When they’re going to court houses to entrap immigrants who are showing up to their court hearings, it’s not that they’re not doing it the right way. And all this because of the demands of a guy with 34 felony convictions? It’s clearly not about the rule of law.”
On his continued efforts to hold President Trump accountable for his cruelty toward immigrant communities
- “I love this country so much, I want her to live up to the values, the ideals, and the rights that we’ve enshrined in the Constitution. And I love this country so much, I will call out anybody abusing their power to undermine those fundamental rights, especially when it’s the President of the United States.”
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Chump's war on immigrants continues. Tatum Todd and Yesenia Amaro (THE OREGONIAN) report:
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers on Thursday arrested a group of farmworkers near Woodburn as they headed to harvest blueberries, according to Oregon for All, an immigration rights advocacy group.
The incident marks the first publicly known ICE arrests of fieldworkers in Oregon since President Donald Trump took office for his second term. Last month, immigration authorities arrested a parent as he was dropping off his child at a Beaverton daycare, and in June ICE agents arrested workers from a Yamhill County vineyard services company.
[. . .]
Oregon for All in a news release said witnesses reported ICE agents broke the driver’s side window of the van.
“These tactics will only scare folks from working during the peak harvest,” said Reyna Lopez, executive director of PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union. “This not only affects farmworkers’ ability to support their families, but also the many growers who rely on migrant labor and our collective ability to put food on our tables.”
Guembes said she learned about the arrests around 9:30 a.m. Thursday and immediately contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to locate the group.
Who's going to pick the blue berries? If you've sat back this whole time and not given a damn about the lives being destroyed, the cruelty carried out by Chump and Kristi Noem, the fact that the deaths in ICE detention centers is already in the double digits for this year (at least one was a suicide), maybe you'll care that you're not getting your favorite foods or that they're going to rot on the vine so what you do get will be more expensive?
Cristela Jones (MY SAN ANTONIO) reports:
Things were going so well that Orman even opened a new pizza joint, Bambino, in 2024, which also received high acclaim. But earlier this year, when Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Orman told MySA he started to see Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) activity begin to impact his business.
"Everybody was hoping that it would be more like 2017, that it wouldn't be as bad," Orman told MySA. "I never heard of any raids happening at restaurants back in 2017 obviously, there was a lot happening on the border. There was a lot happening with kids with the family separations, and so it was a big conversation in Texas, but it [raids] were not as big a conversation, specifically in the hospitality industry."
By mid-April, one of his Bambino employees who didn't show up for work one day was detained by ICE. A few weeks later in late May, Orman posted a social media video on how mass deportations and arrests are impacting Austin's restaurant industry. Within 24 hours of the post, another one of his L'Oca d'Oro employees was detained.
[. . .]
But Orman's restaurants aren't the only ones being impacted by ICE detentions. In early July, the National Restaurant Association sent a letter to Trump urging him to remove "individuals who pose a threat to national security and public safety," partner with the association to implement workforce solutions, and consider deferred action options for "long-serving employees."
This just gets worse and worse each day. It has nothing to do with national security. It has nothing to do with the law. It has to with revenge and fear. Hate mongers foster it and Chump has to court the hate mongers because thinking people -- Democrats or Republicans -- long ago rejected the Convicted Felon.
Lives are being destroyed.
And around the country more and more people are standing up and calling this cruelty out. The National Nurses Association issued the following:
National Nurses United condemns the detainment of fellow registered nurse, Amanda Trebach, by federal agents. We call for her immediate release and a full dismissal of all the charges brought against her.
All over the country, people have been standing up to the Trump administration’s immoral and unjust immigration raids, which have sowed intense fear and chaos in immigrant and migrant communities. In the absence of due process that protects Constitutional rights, people like Amanda Trebach – a RN and former member of California Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses United – have taken up the essential role of monitoring ICE and Border Patrol, to protect the rights of community members and observe and document abductions by masked officers. While Amanda was participating in a community patrol Thursday morning, she was confronted by masked individuals believed to be ICE agents, pushed to the floor face-down, and violently detained. Her arrest is a direct and intentional attack against the constitutional right to protest.
“As nurses, we advocate for our patients both at the bedside and beyond. Like all the violent escalations we have seen this year – including, but not limited, to using hospitals as a site for ICE law enforcement and arresting labor leaders and elected officials for demanding due process – they are meant to silence concerned Americans into accepting these authoritarian tactics,” said Sandy Reding, RN, who is a president of California Nurses Association and a vice president of National Nurses United, which is the nation’s largest union of registered nurses. “We refuse to stand by and watch as our patients and our community members are caught in the dragnet of the Trump administration’s cruel deportation schemes. Amanda must come home, and so must all the innocent people whose lives and whose families’ lives have been devastated by this administration.”
National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.
Some horror stories register a lower emotional reading. Maybe even cause some to chuckle?
When someone supports cruelty aimed at hundreds-of-thousands it's only fitting that the cruelty be turned on them. It's the whole point of the phrase F**k Around and Find Out. Matt Durr (MASS LIVE) reports:
One of the owners of the controversial Trump Burger restaurant franchise is facing deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Despite his perceived allegiance to President Donald Trump, ICE arrested Roland Mehrez Beainy on May 16 and placed him in detention, The Hill reports.
Beainy came to the U.S. in 2019 from Lebanon on a non-immigrant visitor visa. However, it is alleged that he overstayed his visa and is now subject to deportation. Beainy was supposed to leave the U.S. in 2024, according to ICE.
Since coming to the U.S., Beainy helped open a small chain of burger restaurants in Texas known for stamping “Trump” into the top of its burgers. The menu and decor of the restaurants all heap praise on the president. The company recently opened its fourth location in Texas.
Maybe when he's deported to Lebanon, he can take comfort in the fact that his fellow hate mongering Chump supporters are happy his life got destroyed too. You know, the way he was happy to root on the destruction of other immigrants? That's if they remember him at all. His landlord has already seized the greasy burger joints (saying Beainy wasn't making the payments on the lease) and renamed them to MAGA burgers. Ramon Antonio Vargas (GUARDIAN) notes:
Trump Burger gained national attention after Beainy opened the original location in Bellville, Texas, in 2020, the same year Trump lost his bid for a second presidential term to Joe Biden. Replete with memorabilia paying reverence to Trump as well as politically satirical menu items targeting his enemies, Beainy’s chain expanded to other locations, including Houston.
Trump won a second presidency in January, and his administration summarily began delivering on promises to pursue mass deportations of immigrants. Political supporters of Trump in the US without papers, at least in many cases, have not been spared.
One case which generated considerable news headlines was that of a Canadian national who supported Trump’s plans for mass deportation of immigrants – only for federal authorities to detain her in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency and publicly describe her in a statement as “an illegal alien from Canada”.
In another instance, Ice reportedly detained a Christian Armenian Iranian woman who lost her legal permanent US residency, or green card, after a 2008 burglary conviction and incarcerated her at a federal detention facility in California despite her vocal support of Trump. Her husband, with whom she is raising four US citizen children, subsequently blamed the couple’s plight on Biden’s “doing for open borders”, as Newsweek noted.
They cheered it on until it happened to them. Now they refuse to face reality with one idiot even blaming Joe Biden. That's the sickness in America, the stupidity that drags us all down. Even when slapped across the face by reality, some people prefer to delude themselves.
A true horror story. Adeola Adeosun (NEWSWEEK) reports:
You Chen Yang, a 56-year-old Chinese national who owned Hong Kong Restaurant in Perry, New York, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on July 14 during what his family believed was a routine immigration check-in, according to local station WHAM-TV.
You Chen Yang, a 56-year-old Chinese national who owned Hong Kong Restaurant in Perry, New York, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on July 14 during what his family believed was a routine immigration check-in, according to local station WHAM-TV.
Another horror story? Annie Todd (CASCADIA DAILY NEWS) reports:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained an Everett woman and her son at the Canadian border when they were returning from Vancouver, British Columbia, in late July.
The two are now at an immigration facility in south Texas, according to the Washington Federation of State Employees, a labor union that represents state employees.
The woman, Sarah Shaw, and her 6-year-old son had dropped off her two other children at the Vancouver International Airport on July 24 for a flight to New Zealand to visit their grandparents.
When Shaw and her son attempted to cross the border back into the United States, immigration agents detained them based on “incorrect information about their visas,” according to a GoFundMe set up by a family friend.
“When Sarah requested humanitarian parole, not only was she denied that right, agents lied to her, stating they already had requested it and she was denied,” according to the GoFundMe.
Immigration officials have not filed charge paperwork against Shaw, according to the GoFundMe.
Shaw works as a juvenile rehabilitation employee at the Echo Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie. The center, run through the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, is a medium/maximum security facility for juveniles.
“The trauma this has already caused for her and her son may never be healed,” said WFSE President Mike Yestramski, a psychiatric social worker at Western State Hospital. “But our union stands ready to help and support them in any way possible. An injury to one is an injury to all.”
People are fighting back with their voices. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, for example, is staging a protest against ICE raids on August 12th, starting in the morning at MacArthur Park and winding up in the evening outside a detention center.
They're fighting back because Los Angeles continues to be targeted. Clara Harter, Brittny Mejia and Noah Goldberg (LOS ANGELES TIMES) report:
Federal agents detained day laborers outside of a Home Depot in Van Nuys during two raids Friday morning, raising questions over whether their actions may violate a court order that bans agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests.
The operations took place around 7:35 a.m. and then again at 11:50 a.m. outside the Home Depot on Roscoe Boulevard, according to Maegan Ortiz, executive director of Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, which runs a resource center for day laborers directly next to the store.
[. . .]
A number of unmarked white vans started circling the parking lot and immigration agents began "grabbing people first and then asking people for ID" said Ortiz, adding that her organization has confirmed 10 people were taken.
"[The agents] came straight for the day labor center," Ortiz said. "It is very clear they are targeting day laborers and they are targeting the organization."
Ortiz said immigration agents conducted another raid near a Home Depot in Cypress Park on Saturday. Ortiz said she was aware of a half-dozen arrests during the incident. Further details were not immediately available.
On Saturday, dozens lined the streets in Overland Park in support of the immigrant community after recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in the metro.
This was a ‘No ICE’ protest, including Indivisible and Boots on the Ground Midwest. Protest organizers says the rally extended from 80th to 103rd street with about 1,000 people involved.
This comes after multiple workers were taken from ICE on Wednesday, July 30, from two restaurants in Lenexa and one in Kansas City, Kansas, as well as a Lenexa City Councilwoman sharing that her citizenship was questioned.
Everyone but Chump and his minions are calling out these crimes against humanity. Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), along with Representatives Lou Correa (D-Calif.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) led 48 Congressional Democrats in writing to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, urging them to launch an investigation into the Department’s stops, arrests, detentions, and deportations of U.S. citizens.
“Sweeping enforcement operations by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents — particularly within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — threaten the safety, due process, and civil liberties of Americans around the country,” said the lawmakers.
ICE policy makes clear that, by law “ICE cannot assert its civil immigration enforcement authority to arrest and/or detain a U.S. citizen.” Yet, in recent high-profile cases, ICE has arrested U.S. citizens, even appearing to use violent physical force. ICE has also detained citizens in immigration detention facilities, sometimes for over a week.
ICE has even deported U.S. citizens, including children, along with their undocumented parents, reportedly against the families’ wishes.
“Particularly in Latino and Native American communities, Americans increasingly fear that their citizenship will not protect them from being swept up in DHS’s immigration enforcement activities,” wrote the lawmakers.
Agents are also failing to attempt to verify citizenship and ignoring citizens’ offers to show proof of citizenship, even though ICE policy directs them to “handle these matters with the utmost care and highest priority.”
ICE’s erroneous enforcement actions against U.S. citizens are not new, and have long been acknowledged by the agency. But under the second Trump administration, this rare practice is becoming more frequent. Experts warn that “citizens are becoming increasingly vulnerable in a system moving faster and operating with fewer safeguards.” The number of impacted citizens may continue to grow, as ICE engages in indiscriminate raids to triple daily arrest numbers to 3,000 while gutting due process—including by firing immigration judges, expanding expedited removal, and exploiting the Alien Enemies Act. ICE has reminded field offices to update citizenship data in agency databases, but it is unclear whether agents are complying with that directive.
“When immigration agents arrest Americans without sufficient cause or simply because they are near an enforcement action, detain them without access to counsel, or ignore proof of citizenship, DHS fails in its core duty to protect the public and undermines trust in its operations,” the lawmakers concluded.
The members of Congress asked the agency to provide, by September 5, 2025, clarity on its policies and guidelines related to arresting or detention of U.S. citizens, along with: data on stops, arrests, detentions, and deportations of citizens this year; information about how agents are trained to verify citizenship status; and any ongoing reviews of wrongful detentions of citizens.
U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) joined in signing the letter.
Representatives Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Donald S. Beyer Jr. (D-Va.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Laura Friedman (D-Calif.), Jesús G. "Chuy" García (D-Ill.), Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Al Green (D-Texas), Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Jonathan L. Jackson (D-Ill.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Timothy M. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) joined in signing as well.
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