Saturday, October 10, 2026

The Chump administration's embarrassments and crimes

Another day, another tragedy caused by ICE.  This one was this morning outside Houston, Texas. Ronnie Marley and Steven Ardary (FOX 26) report ICE rammed a car into a man:


Leslie Briones, who is the Harris County Commissioner for Precinct 4, released a statement on Saturday saying, "I am horrified to learn that an ICE vehicle struck a man on Clay Road this morning in Precinct 4. While we wait to learn more, my prayers are with his family. Under the Trump administration, ICE has brought chaos and destruction to communities across our country. ICE must cooperate fully with the Harris County Sheriff's Office and release all video evidence of this incident. We demand full transparency, accountability, and respect for the rule of law."

Cesar Espinosa with FIEL Houston released a statement on Saturday afternoon saying, "We have more questions than answers. The biggest question we have is why does this keep happening? We demand answers and transparency from all agencies involved. the community needs to know the identities of the agents and if there are charges that are filed for the wrongdoing committed."

Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin released on statement late Saturday afternoon saying, "This morning, there was another incident involving ICE actions in Harris County. Time is of the essence in getting the facts, and the public deserves clear, accurate answers. ICE must cooperate fully with the local investigation. My office supports Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and District Attorney Sean Teare in their ongoing independent investigation, and the Harris County Attorney's Office stands ready to assist and support these critical efforts. We will continue to monitor developments closely as the facts become clear."

Alejandra Salinas, Council Member Houston-At Large for Position 4, released a statement on Facebook Saturday saying, "ICE agents hit a Houstonian with a vehicle while pursuing him during an enforcement operation this morning, leaving him hospitalized with serious injuries. This is yet another example of ICE operating without accountability and harming our community. All video evidence should be released, and ICE must cooperate fully with a transparent investigation by local law enforcement so those responsible are held accountable." 


Tony Atkins (ABC 13) explains:


Surveillance video obtained by ABC13 shows the moment an unmarked SUV carrying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ran over a man during a pursuit at a shopping center in west Harris County.

The video shows a white pickup truck stopping along Clay Road, facing oncoming traffic. Two men get out of the truck. One runs toward Highway 6, while the other, identified by ICE as Miguel Parra-Hernandez, runs through a shopping center parking lot.

Moments later, a dark, unmarked SUV turns into the parking lot and runs over Parra-Hernandez.

A witness who spoke with ABC13 on the condition of anonymity said he saw the incident unfold.

"He said, 'Ah! Ah! Ah! You broke my leg! You broke my leg!'" the witness recalled.


So now they're running down suspects -- please note, a suspect, they had no idea who this man was -- with their cars and inflicting physical damage.  


ICE is out of control.  They are terrorizing people across the country.  They are poorly trained and often unqualified.  Which makes them not unlike their current leader Markwayne Mullin. 


In other ICE news, Ishani Desai (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:


An off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was shot early Friday after he was found sleeping on the lawn of a home in Fresno, Calif., the authorities said.

The Fresno Police Department received calls reporting a gunshot in a neighborhood shortly after 3 a.m. local time, the department said in a statement on Friday.

David Gonzalez, an ICE agent from Texas, had been sleeping on the lawn when a woman returned to her house and saw him, the police said. The woman told her father, who was inside the house.

The father, 72, woke up Mr. Gonzalez, who appeared “intoxicated and agitated,” the police said. Mr. Gonzalez then assaulted the 72-year-old man, causing several “visible injuries,” and then assaulted his daughter when she tried to intervene, the police said.

The woman’s father then pulled out a firearm and shot Mr. Gonzalez once, the police said. The woman’s boyfriend, an off-duty police officer, arrived soon after and handcuffed Mr. Gonzalez, the police said.

Mr. Gonzalez, 32, was charged with felony assault and vandalism, the Fresno Police Department said. He was taken away from the scene in an ambulance and received treatment while an investigation was carried out, the police said.



Meanwhile Chump's appointed US Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle remains in the news.  See  Ann's "Con Woman Kimberly Guilfoyle" and "Crooked Guilfoyle,  Mike's "Idiot of the Week" and Ruth's "Chump's corruption requires serious consequences" if you're new to the story.   One of grifter Guilfoyle's marks came forward this week to expose her:  Adam Lynch notes:


Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's scandal is spreading as her $100,000 shakedown of Eric Deters, a campaign donor to President Donald Trump makes the rounds, but Deters told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday that Guilfoyle's brand of grift is nowhere near the end of the corruption choking the Trump administration.

Speaking with Tapper, Deter outlined a dismal smear of exploitation, repeating that Guilfoyle is “wicked” and “knows plenty” about Trump-era corruption.

“That's just common sense. I mean, when Don Jr. and her broke up, she gets the Greek ambassadorship. That was throwing her a bone,” said Deter. “She could find herself a Greek billionaire. And the Trumps could have peace. However, it's not working out very good because she's been flying around Europe with an energy lobbyist, and now she's having to deal with the allegations that I've brought forward against her.”

According to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, Guilfoyle needed Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, to secretly pay off her $100,000 American Express bill. Deters, meanwhile, said that he desperately needed someone in the Trump administration to help on some personal tax and legal issues. Guilfoyle said that she could use her influence as Donald Trump Jr.'s ex to connect him with the new chief of the IRS and the Justice Department so he could lobby his case. She just needed the $100,000 first.”

[. . .]

“I bashed the Bidens all the time for what I saw as shadow criminality with Hunter and the family. Well, what the Trumps are doing is just totally different,” Deter said. “Jared Kushner is involved in the Abraham Accords and then does a $3 billion fund with Saudi Arabia? Don Jr. — Uh, Trump says ‘crypto is a scam’ and then his sons get involved in crypto. And all of a sudden, Trump's a proponent of crypto. So, they're adding to their wealth just out in the open.”


Niki Kitsantonis, Lara Jakes and Lynsey Chutel (NEW YORK TIMES) report:


Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. She has said that her experience with Greece before being nominated as Mr. Trump’s envoy last November came from college history classes and a honeymoon trip. She has served in Athens with a mixture of MAGA glitz and what her supporters have described as relentlessness in securing business deals involving American interests.

She has come under fire in recent weeks in reports in The Wall Street Journal, which reported last month on potential conflicts of interest in Ms. Guilfoyle’s involvement in energy deals in Greece.

This week, the Journal revealed her communications with a Republican donor, Eric Deters, who said that Ms. Guilfoyle had asked him to wire $100,000 to pay off her credit card just before her confirmation hearing, which he did not pay. The New York Times confirmed their discussions.


Chump's trying to distance himself from the reports but he's the one who picked her.  Before US State Department Secretary Marco Rubio went to Greece this week, he was praising her.  It's very embarrassing for Chump and his administration.  In other Chump embarrassments, John Ismay (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:

The Pentagon has again quietly raised the number of U.S. service members killed and wounded during operations related to the Iran war amid widening criticism over the lack of transparency about the conflict’s human and operational costs.

The military now is reporting that 21 U.S. service members have been killed, up from 18, and 865 wounded, up by 98 since August.

The changes were posted Friday evening to the Defense Casualty Analysis System website, which offers a detailed breakdown of casualties by branch of service, rank, race and ethnicity.

The cause of the increased casualty numbers is not completely clear, since the hostilities between the United States and Iran have largely been in a lull for many weeks.

“There is no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude,” Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, and Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said in a joint statement on Friday.

If you're thinking, "21?  That number seems so familiar," it's because THE WASHINGTON POST reported last month on assertions that 21 service members had died in the Iran War, 3 more than the Defense Dept was copping to.  John Ismay notes:

In response to reporting by The Washington Post in September that more U.S. troops had died in support of the Iran war than the Pentagon had acknowledged, Mr. Hegseth took to social media to say, “This is DISGUSTING and FAKE. A complete LIE.”

The defense secretary also said The Post is “worse than Iranian state media.”

Mr. Hegseth’s office did not immediately respond to a request on Saturday for comment regarding the updated casualty numbers. The increase was reported earlier on Saturday by The Post.


Priss Pot Hegseth is trying to serve up the live streaming of an execution.  US House Rep Chrissy Houlahan issued the following:


WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Representative Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06), shared the following statement on Secretary Hegseth's announcement that the execution of the Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed:

"Nidal Hasan is a murderer and terrorist who will face justice as determined by the unanimous verdict of a jury, in accordance with the principles of due process that our democracy is built on.

What did the jury not have a say in? Livestreaming the execution for the public to see. The U.S. hasn’t held a public execution in over a century, and with good reason. We are not Iran or North Korea. We know that justice is not entertainment, nor is it the glorification of violence. I urge Secretary Hegseth to reconsider this decision and to treat justice for this heinous act with the seriousness it requires."



--end--

Sophie Hurwitz (MOTHER JONES) reports: 


The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who opened fire on dozens of people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, is now scheduled for December 3. Hasan, at the time an active-duty major in the Army, was shot in the back by police during the massacre and now, paralyzed from the waist down, uses a wheelchair. When Hegseth spoke about the execution livestream with far-right streamer Jack Posobiec on Thursday, he hardly seemed able to contain his excitement.

“He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said. The execution, as Hegseth envisions it, would be first and foremost a mass spectacle. “We’re going to make sure people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said.

That is to say, Hegseth wants to make a snuff film.


Evan Blake (WSWS) adds:

Hegseth’s interviewer was Jack Posobiec, a fascist propagandist involved in the January 6 coup attempt, who opened the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference by declaring, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.”

With Trump’s approval, Hegseth chose the unorthodox killing method of the firing squad, stating, “Well I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II.” The US Army of that war hanged most of the soldiers it executed, many of them at the hands of a single Army hangman, and rarely used the firing squad. Hitler’s Wehrmacht relied on the firing squad to enforce obedience, shooting over 18,000 of its own soldiers, while the Nazi occupiers carried out mass public hangings across Poland and the Soviet Union, photographed and circulated as warnings. That is the “mentality” Hegseth admires and seeks to emulate.

What purpose does this spectacle serve?

It is staged, first, for the most backward and degraded layers of American society, whom Trump cultivates at rallies that have sunk to new lows, if that is possible. Speaking in San Antonio on Wednesday, Trump boasted to the crowd that “we are going to deliver final justice to an evil killer.” Its broader purpose is to brutalize the population and implicate it in state killing.

The man staging the public execution is a sadist. Hegseth belongs to a church network co-founded by the self-described Christian nationalist Doug Wilson. His tattoos include the neo-fascist slogan “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” the battle cry of the medieval Crusades against the Muslim world. At a livestreamed Pentagon prayer service in March, he asked God for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” Hegseth would have been at home in the Nazi battalions that machine-gunned partisans and Jews across occupied Eastern Europe, and he would have relished the work. But Hegseth is no isolated psychopath. He is the Secretary of War, chosen by Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

Hegseth is modeling himself on Heinrich Himmler, with Trump as his Führer. The Nazis built Himmler’s Waffen-SS as a party army outside the Wehrmacht, sworn personally to Hitler and selected for ideological reliability. Hegseth’s search for such men did not begin at the Pentagon. In 2019, as a Fox News host, he lobbied Trump to pardon soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, insisting they were “not war criminals, they’re warriors.” Trump obliged. As Secretary of War, Hegseth has made a “warrior ethos” the watchword of his tenure and purged generals and the military’s top lawyers.

Hegseth is a product of the all-volunteer military, a force increasingly insulated from the civilian population, and he aims to widen that divide. His firing squad will be made up not of professional executioners but of ordinary soldiers, ordered to shoot a paralyzed man before a mass audience. The aim is to bind the soldiers to the regime through complicity and to select and cultivate within the military a layer prepared to carry out such work.


Let's wind down with this from US Senator Alex Padilla's office:


WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin to immediately remove from field duty all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers hired during the Department’s 2025 hiring surge. In an oversight letter that comes days after new reports of the agency’s plans to hire 5,000 new officers before year’s end, the Senators demanded DHS complete comprehensive retraining and re-vetting for all officers hired during the 2025 surge period.

“Over the past year, ICE and other DHS personnel have fatally shot and killed multiple people during vehicle stops and enforcement operations, including several instances in which agents opened fire on people inside their own cars,” wrote the Senators. “These killings, combined with the whistleblower’s account of corners cut on both vetting and training, make clear that officers hired during the surge did not receive adequate instruction in de-escalation, use-of-force standards, and vehicle-stop protocols before being sent into communities with the authority to use deadly force.” 

Republicans poured $75 billion into ICE through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and then added another $38.5 billion more this summer, allowing ICE to hire thousands of new officers with incentives including a signing bonus of up to $50,000 and up to $60,000 in student-loan repayment. To meet the hiring demand, the agency lowered hiring standards and cut corners on background checks, raising concerns about unqualified and poorly trained armed officers conducting immigration arrests. Several incidents involving death and violence led to increased calls for oversight by Senate Democrats. ICE is now reportedly preparing for a second hiring surge of 5,000 employees, including deportation officers, before the end of the year – roughly a 17% increase in three months – without having completed background investigations for thousands of hires from the first surge. 

The letter follows recent New York Times reporting detailing a formal whistleblower complaint to the DHS Office of Inspector General from a 17-year ICE veteran overseeing background investigations. The complaint alleged that job offers were extended to candidates without completion of basic fingerprint, identity, or credit checks and were evaded by political appointees. In another whistleblower disclosure to the Senate, a former ICE Academy instructor and agency attorney disclosed that ICE cut training hours on use of force, firearms safety, and the constitutional rights of the public during this same period. According to another New York Times report, 7,500 active officers with arrest authority hired during last year’s surge are still awaiting the full background investigations required for their positions. 

“DHS cannot allow officers whose backgrounds were never properly vetted, and who may never have received adequate use-of-force training, to remain on the streets with arrest authority and firearms,” concluded the Senators. 

In the letter, the Senators also urged DHS to: 

  • Immediately suspend field enforcement duties for all ICE officers hired during the 2025 hiring surge, pending completion of full background checks and training.
  • Provide a full accounting of how many current ICE officers received job offers or field assignments before completing fingerprint, identity, and credit checks, and how many of those officers have discharged a firearm in the course of duty.
  • Provide ICE’s 2026 hiring plan, including
    • All documents, memoranda, internal communications, staffing assessments, and analyses of staffing needs;
    • The vetting and training protocols; and
    • The name and title of each official who approved the plan. 
  • Provide a copy of the whistleblower’s complaint and any Office of Inspector General findings or corrective action plan arising from it.
  • Provide a detailed accounting of the use-of-force policy and vehicle-stop protocol changes DHS has made since January 2026.
    • Including how those changes have been implemented and audited across ICE field offices.

Padilla has been a leader in holding the Trump Administration accountable for its cruel and reckless mass deportation agenda. Last week, Padilla conducted an unannounced oversight visit to the de facto ICE detention facility at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Last month, Padilla called out the Trump Administration’s continued abuses of power and inhumane treatment of detained immigrants, after sounding the alarm on the significant increase in deaths among detainees in ICE custody since January 2025. He also demanded DHS immediately halt its reckless plan to equip ICE officers with electric shock gloves. Padilla also condemned Republicans’ partisan bill to provide ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with an extra $70 billion without necessary reforms and forced a vote on his amendment that would require ICE officers to wear body cameras while on-duty.

Full letter is available here and below:

Dear Secretary Mullin:

We write to demand that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately remove from field duty all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers hired and trained during the 2025 hiring surge, and that those officers be required to complete comprehensive retraining and re-vetting before being permitted to return to enforcement operations. Over the past year, public reporting on DHS’s hiring and training requirements, and the conduct of its officers in the field, demonstrates that ICE officers hired during this surge cannot be trusted with a badge and the authority to make arrests. These concerns are heightened now that ICE is preparing a second hiring surge of 5,000 employees before year’s end without having completed background investigations for thousands of hires from the first.

On September 3, 2026, The New York Times reported that a 17-year ICE veteran who oversaw background investigations made a formal whistleblower complaint last year, expressing concern about a systemic breakdown in the vetting of thousands of ICE recruits brought on during the agency’s rapid expansion. According to the complaint, ICE’s human resources division routinely extended final job offers before candidates had completed basic fingerprint, identity, or credit checks, and political appointees were permitted to bypass standard background investigations to obtain national security eligibility. The complaint, filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General, warned that this unprecedented lowering of hiring standards left the agency vulnerable to insider threats, infiltration, and foreign influence, and it called on DHS to immediately suspend the improper practices, hold accountable those responsible, and review recent hires for potential insider threats. A separate whistleblower, a former ICE Academy instructor and agency attorney, separately disclosed that ICE cut training hours on use of force, firearms safety, and the constitutional rights of the public during this same period.

New reporting confirms that the vetting failures the whistleblower described persist today. On September 29, 2026, The New York Times reported that nearly 7,500 individuals hired during last year’s surge are still awaiting the full background investigations required for their positions, and that they may work on a limited basis in the meantime. ICE had already removed hundreds of surge hires by this spring. Before even addressing this problem, ICE now intends to hire 5,000 more employees by year’s end—a workforce expansion of roughly 17 percent in three months—and most will serve as deportation officers with arrest authority.  DHS’s assurances that it will apply rigorous standards to this new cohort cannot be taken at face value when it has not yet cleared the officers it already hired.

These vetting and training failures preceded a series of violent and deadly incidents involving ICE officials. Over the past year, ICE and other DHS personnel have fatally shot and killed multiple people during vehicle stops and enforcement operations, including several instances in which agents opened fire on people inside their own cars:

  • On January 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, as she attempted to drive away from agents during an enforcement operation. Witnesses reported that federal officers blocked bystanders and medics from rendering aid.
  • Less than two weeks later, Border Patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, during the same wave of Minneapolis enforcement operations.
  • On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston, Texas fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker and father of three, while he was driving a work crew to a job site. Witnesses have disputed DHS’s account that Mr. Salgado Araujo used his vehicle as a weapon.
  • Six days later, on July 13, 2026, an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old father, in his car after agents rammed his vehicle and fired multiple rounds through it while executing a warrant for someone else. Mr. Durán Guerrero was not the target of the operation and was authorized to work in the United States.

A review of shootings by federal immigration officers during this Administration found that the overwhelming majority—19 of 22 incidents identified as of July 2026—began with a vehicle stop, underscoring that ICE’s current tactics for approaching and stopping vehicles are placing officers and the public in unnecessary danger. These killings, combined with the whistleblower’s account of corners cut on both vetting and training, make clear that officers hired during the surge did not receive adequate instruction in deescalation, use-of-force standards, and vehicle-stop protocols before being sent into communities with the authority to use deadly force.

DHS cannot allow officers whose backgrounds were never properly vetted, and who may never have received adequate use-of-force training, to remain on the streets with arrest authority and firearms. We therefore request that DHS:

  1. Immediately suspend field enforcement duties for all ICE officers hired and deployed during the 2025 hiring surge, pending completion of full background revetting and use of-force retraining.
  2. Provide a full accounting of how many current ICE officers received job offers or field assignments before completing fingerprint, identity, and credit checks, and how many of those officers have discharged a firearm in the course of duty.
  3. Provide ICE’s plan to hire 5,000 employees by the end of 2026, including all documents, memoranda, internal communications, staffing assessments, and analyses of staffing needs related to the plan; the vetting and training protocols that will apply to the new hires; and the name and title of each official who approved the plan.
  4. Provide a copy of the whistleblower’s complaint and any Office of Inspector General findings or corrective action plan arising from it.
  5. Provide a detailed accounting of the use-of-force policy and vehicle-stop protocol changes DHS has made since January 2026, including how those changes have been implemented and audited across ICE field offices.

Finally, we are deeply concerned by indications that DHS and ICE leadership may not be taking whistleblower complaints seriously. ICE’s public response to this most recent whistleblower complaint focused on defending its vetting practices rather than addressing the substance of the allegations. Whistleblowers who come forward in good faith to report waste, fraud, abuse, or threats to public and national security are protected by federal law, and DHS has an obligation to ensure that employees who raise these concerns through proper channels are not retaliated against, sidelined, or pushed out of the agency. We therefore ask that DHS confirm, in writing, the specific steps it is taking to ensure that whistleblower complaints related to ICE hiring, vetting, and training are investigated promptly, that whistleblowers are protected from retaliation consistent with the Whistleblower Protection Act and related authorities, and that findings are shared with the appropriate oversight bodies, including Congress.

We request a written response to this letter, including responses to the items above, no later than October 13, 2026. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Sincerely,

###


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