But a quieter kind of surge was spreading across the country at the same time. In September 2025, ICE announced new incentives for a partnership program known as 287(g). The program’s most aggressive form, the so-called task force model, which Ingram opted in to, enlists local police officers as deputy immigration agents, and the new incentives included a $100,000 vehicle stipend, a $7,500 equipment stipend for every participating officer, quarterly performance bonuses and funding to help cover officer salaries and overtime. “By joining forces with ICE,” the announcement read, “you’re not just gaining access to these unprecedented reimbursement opportunities — you’re becoming part of a national effort to ensure the safety of every American family.”
Alexander completed an online course with ICE a few weeks after the baptism party, qualifying him for time-and-a-half pay whenever he helped the agency pick up immigrants. Here in the Texas Hill Country, he soon became the local face of the national crackdown.
Ingram was just starting to recover from its worst natural disaster in a century, the flood that summer that killed at least 139 people up and down the Guadalupe River, including 25 girls at Camp Mystic. In the riverbed, towering bald cypress trees now stood at a lean, their branches swept back by a 30-foot surge of water and mud, their trunks still plastered with debris. As construction workers rebuilding the community traveled to their job sites via Junction Highway, Ingram’s five-lane main thoroughfare, a black Charger began stopping them before they could get there.
Within three months of the baptism party, Alexander and Ingram’s other patrol officer had delivered at least 70 people to immigration agents, picking off what the police chief called a “dumbfounding” number of undocumented drivers. Within a year, they would hand over the equivalent of 10 percent of Ingram to ICE.
The weight of what Alexander was doing started to settle on him after Christmas. He says he was out patrolling as one of his new ICE handlers, a man in a ball cap and dark glasses, hovered nearby in an unmarked S.U.V. Around lunchtime, Alexander followed two Latino men in a 2008 GMC truck for several blocks before stopping them, they recall him saying, for failing to signal a turn.
A young man sat in the passenger seat. Alexander checked his papers along with the driver’s and determined that both were undocumented. The agent in the unmarked S.U.V. rolled up behind them. Alexander realized who the man in the passenger seat was only after Martinez arrived in tears. It was her husband, Ulices Macias, the father of her newborn daughter.
“I don’t normally do this,” Martinez recalls Alexander telling her, “but I’m going to open up the car. I’m going to take the handcuffs off him.” He let the family have a moment together. In a video taken by Martinez’s younger sister, Alexander stood by, expressionless, as Martinez embraced Macias by the rear door of the Charger. He watched Macias cradle his 2-week-old baby girl, swaddled in a white blanket, and hug Martinez’s 4-year-old son, his stepson.
Then the ICE agent put the handcuffs back on Martinez’s husband, wrapped a chain around his waist and led him away. Alexander says Martinez threw herself to the ground and sobbed.
Images of the family he broke up shortly after Christmas would intrude on Alexander’s thoughts for months, he told us. But it didn’t keep him from doing his job. His next shift came a few days after he handed over Macias, and he was back in the Charger, back to stopping cars on Junction Highway.
[. . .]
Alexander said it was hard for him to be out in public anymore. He can’t escape being recognized in Ingram and Kerrville. Sometimes he catches Latinos staring at him, then walking away, visibly uncomfortable. So he tries to do his shopping and errands in another town 30 minutes away.
Alexander is grappling with what he's done right now. And it's only going to get worse for him. We noted this when Chump ramped up his war on immigrants That the people rounding these people up were going to struggle to live with their actions. That some would self-harm and self-medicate. Because this is not about humanity and it's honestly not about immigration.
Chump's got quotas. To meet those quotas, it sometimes requires rounding up US citizens. THE NEWSHOUR (PBS) covered this last week:
Geoff Bennett:
Officials in California are calling for an investigation into the actions of federal immigration officers after they allegedly injured and detained a U.S. citizen this past weekend.
William Brangham has the latest on the growing number of Americans who are being caught up in the administration's enforcement action.
William Brangham:
The incident in question took place on Saturday in Long Beach, California. Video shows the moment Ricardo Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen, is riding an e-bike and then is stopped alongside an unmarked ICE vehicle. It's unclear whether the vehicle hit him or not. He's later seen being held face down in handcuffs screaming.
Ricardo Gonzalez, Detained By ICE:
My arm is broken. Help me. Help me. My arm is (EXPLETIVE DELETED) broken. My arm is (EXPLETIVE DELETED) broken. My arm is broken. It (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hurts!
William Brangham:
Gonzalez was later taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. ICE says Gonzalez was arrested because he was rioting and damaged a government vehicle.
Details of Gonzalez's detainment come as a new investigation by ProPublica has found more than 500 U.S. citizens have been caught up in the ongoing immigration dragnet.
For more on this, we are joined by ProPublica's Nicole Foy, who was one of the reporters on this series.
Nicole, thank you so much for being here.
Is this incident that we saw reported in California this weekend, does this align with the kinds of cases that you document in your reporting?
Nicole Foy, ProPublica:
It absolutely does, mostly because we found citizens getting detained by immigration officials for a variety of reasons around the country and sometimes in very similar situations like this, where maybe there was a protest nearby or maybe there was just an unexpected encounter between a U.S. citizen in their neighborhood where they lived with immigration officials, who have really expanded their dragnet and the number of people that they're trying to detain.
And, sometimes, those two people co collide, quite literally in this case. And there are many, many citizens that we have documented of the more than 500 that we found were detained so far who were also really seriously injured after their encounters as well.
William Brangham:
I mean, DHS, as you reported in your series, repeatedly says that they do not detain or arrest U.S. citizens, despite what your reporting shows.
When you say that U.S. citizens are being detained, as you documented, who are the people that are being detained and what are the other circumstances around their cases?
Nicole Foy:
Yes, it's a mix of folks.
Sometimes, it is folks that immigration officials have accused of assaulting or interfering with immigration operations. Sometimes, that seems to be the case. And, other times, there is witness -- witness testimony or footage that really contradicts that narrative.
But there's also been many, many people who have been detained because of questions about their citizenship, whether they were on a construction site and didn't speak English very well, or they were -- there were questions about whether they also were here in the United States without papers. We have seen people detained in a variety of ways.
William Brangham:
What happens after these people are detained? I mean, are formal charges filed? It seems that if ICE then realizes you have an American citizen in custody, you would think that would be the end of it.
Nicole Foy:
Yes, some people who have been charged with -- who have been arrested on allegations of assault were charged with assault, but we found many who still to this day have not been charged with assault, even if officials release statements accusing them of that.
We also found dozens of people who were held for several days, including at least 24 hours without being able to access their phone or their lawyer or to contact their family and let them know where they were. So it's -- some people really had a very brief detention, where it was maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes where they're in handcuffs on the side of the road.
But other people disappeared into a system that was actually very difficult for their loved ones and their lawyers to find them, and at the same time they sometimes were seriously injured as well.
William Brangham:
You shared a lot of your reporting, including the videos that you compiled, with former immigration officials to gauge their reaction. What was it that they told you about what you had uncovered?
Nicole Foy:
They were really shocked by what they saw. These are folks who -- two particular officials that I'm thinking of retired fairly recently.
And they said that, first of all, they had never seen this many U.S. citizen encounters at all, let alone this level of detention, and that the -- they really characterized much of the use of force, the apparent reason or probable cause for stops, as really troubling, because it did not -- it did not seem that officers were following what they believe that they should have been trained to do.
William Brangham:
Are there constitutional protections for Americans in these kinds of circumstances? And, if so, have there been any sort of enforcement actions against officers who might have been accused of or found committing wrongdoing?
Nicole Foy:
Yes, I mean, everyone in the U.S. has constitutional protections, whether you are an immigrant or you are a U.S. citizen.
But what our reporting found was just, particularly when you're just looking at these detentions and arrests of U.S. citizens, really some very troubling examples of possible violations of folks' Fourth Amendment, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, whether that's accusations of racial profiling or accusations of really excessive force use during the arrest.
But we also found hundreds of people who were arrested because they were participating in a protest. We found many people who were also film -- were simply filming when they were arrested, and they believe that that is the reason why they are arrested. The government may disagree, but they believe their First Amendment rights were violated in that way as well.
Over the weekend, Christine Zhu (NC NEWSLINE) reported:
Immigration advocates are demanding answers after a U.S. citizen said he was arrested at gunpoint by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on his way to work in Charlotte earlier this week.
Atilio Portillo, a resident of east Charlotte who owns a small construction business, told reporters during a press conference Friday that ICE agents stopped him as he was on his way to work early Wednesday morning with his brother and nephew.
The agents blocked his work truck with unmarked vehicles, broke its windows, and pointed guns at the passengers, according to Portillo. He said his requests for a warrant or explanation of the stop were denied.
Bystander video compiled by the advocacy group Siembra NC shows a man in an ICE uniform holding a a handgun while breaking Portillo’s driver’s side window. It also shows Portillo yelling, “I am a U.S. citizen” while agents put him in handcuffs.
Also on ICE, Mike Ludwig (TRUTHOUT) notes:
The Trump administration is attempting to intimidate Latino voters and naturalized citizens with the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests ahead of the midterm elections, democracy advocates are warning.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, has deployed federal agents in multiple states to knock on doors and demand voters verify their identities and registration as part of an “Unlawful Voter Initiative” launched in August. In response to a lawsuit filed on October 19 by labor and voting rights groups, a federal judge in California ruled the DHS initiative violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered federal agents to halt “elections-related field operations and field interviews” in California, Wisconsin, New York, Missouri, Connecticut, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
“I look at this list of states, and I can think of some high-profile races that may be anticipated to be close in a lot of those jurisdictions,” said David Janovsky, senior policy analyst and acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, in an interview. “So, I think there is a reasonable question in all of this about how the federal government is choosing to focus these efforts, and the motivation that is behind that.”
Critical contests in these states include the tight race between Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia, which could decide which party has a majority in the Senate. In California, New York, and beyond, multiple races could help to determine control of the House or pad a Democratic majority.
Markwayne Mullin is doing a great job, isn't he? Arresting US citizens, going door to door to hunt out voters. I'd love to hear him answer for that in a Senate hearing.
On the Dept of (In)Justice's move on Alaska, Robert Davis (RAW STORY) quotes DEMOCRACY WATCH's Marc Elias:
"This is serious stuff," Elias said. "This is going to determine whether we have free and fair elections or not, and I think it's going to determine whether or not Democrats are going to be able to sweep the House and the Senate, as I expect them to, or Donald Trump is going to try to rig the outcome."
Elias noted that the Justice Department's arguments are seemingly meritless. For instance, the law the DOJ cited in its brief deals with voter registration, not certification, Elias said.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs (NEW YORK TIMES) explains:
Rather than simply push false claims at his rallies or target voters his administration claims should not be on the rolls, Mr. Trump moved to pre-emptively challenge the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican candidate narrowly loses.
In doing so, Mr. Trump harnessed the power of the federal government to try to interfere in the voting process before Election Day — essentially trying to nullify an opponent’s potential win before the game has been called.
Even for a president who worked to undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election, the anticipatory strike reflects a new intensification of Mr. Trump’s attempts to use his official powers to achieve the election results he wants — one that undermines the democratic process, according to election and legal experts. While they say the administration’s lawsuit is unlikely to be successful, the tactic could still further Mr. Trump’s goals by shaking the confidence of voters in the outcome of the race.
“This is part of the election takeover playbook that I’ve seen around the world and unfortunately in some other autocratic environments,” said Michael McNulty, a former senior elections adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development who has studied election issues around the world, including in El Salvador, Hungary and Venezuela. “Trump has essentially undermined the independence of the D.O.J. and it’s been weaponized.”
The latest phase of Mr. Trump’s strategy centers on the Justice Department, which asked a federal court to block the certification of the election if the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, were to lose by a slim margin. The administration argued the presence of another candidate with a nearly identical name on the ballot has skewed the election toward Democrats.
The issue has already been litigated in the state: In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired elementary schoolteacher, could appear on the ballot.
Attorney General Toad Blanche appeared Sunday on CNN's STATE OF THE UNION where Dana Bash attempted to make some sort of sense out of Blanche's ridiculous law suit:
BASH: I want to start where I just left off, which is the question. What exactly is the crime that the president says is being committed in Alaska?
BLANCHE: Well, it's not the president -- it's not only the president that's saying that. It's the director of the Alaskan election process, who has said that the second Dan Sullivan is going to create confusion, is not a real candidate, and is on the ballot only to pull votes from the incumbent.
So the real question that Americans should be asking is not what you just opened on, but how, as a country, how, as Alaskans, are we allowing this to happen? How can it be that somebody that the director of the Alaskan election process has said is a fraud and should not be allowed to run because his only purpose is to pull votes away from the from another candidate who's running for the right reasons?
BASH: What's the crime?
BLANCHE: And so - yes, so the department -- what's the crime? Well, it depends. There could be a crime, but the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard.
So, an Alaskan intends to vote for one candidate, but is confused because of the -- of a second candidate with exactly the same name who's voted Democrat his entire life, who donated money to the other Democrat opponent, is running. That's the real question.
BASH: Mr. Attorney General, I don't need to tell you that the Constitution says -- Article I in the Constitution, Article I, section 4, states that the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state.
You mentioned the fact that people are upset in Alaska. It went all the way up to the Alaska State Supreme Court, and they ruled four months ago on this matter. They said that Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. could remain on the ballot.
There is no crime. Alaska's Supreme Court already ruled on this. The ballot with the two Dan's notes which of the two is a Republican and which of the two is the incumbent.
Blanche is asking for a do-over in case he doesn't like the results. If he doesn't like the results, he insists, the voters were confused.
Voters are confused all the time. They get fake mailers all the time -- like in Texas where a 'trans organization' that doesn't exist attempted to rile voters in what is likely a Republican scam. The GOP is notorious for its misinformation and disinformation. It exists to confuse voters.
In the end, it's the role of the voter to educate themselves. That includes on proposals on the ballot as well as candidates on the ballot. Pat Paulsen ran in GOP primaries and that wasn't a problem. Pat was never a real candidate. He was a comedian. The whole thing was a lark but he was on the ballot. North Dakota's GOP primary found him coming in second to George H.W. Bush and this was 1992 after he'd been pulling this prank or joke since 1968.
Were some people in North Dakota in 1992 confused? I'm sure they were. That was their fault. They're supposed to educate themselves. And I'm also sure that some people found the run amusing and voted for Pat for that reason while others chose Pat because it was, to them, the ultimate screw you.
Blanche is predicting that people will be confused and insisting on a do over. How are people confused? In Alaska, this reached their state supreme court and now, thanks to Blanche, this candidate is yet again in the news. Anyone wanting to vote for the incumbent know there are two people on the ballot and they should know that the incumbent is a Republican and is labeled on the ballot as an incumbent and as a Republican. If they're not able to differentiate between the two Dan Sullivans -- with party and incumbent listed by the name of one -- then they honestly aren't informed enough to vote. But they chose to vote so that's on them.
There are no do overs nor should there be.
Chump has admitted that Blanche is acting on his directive but Toad refused to confirm that in his conversation with Dana Bash. Speaking on FACE THE NATION yesterday, he refused to even believe that Chump had said publicly that he ordered the lawsuit:
MARGARET BRENNAN: He said: "I told them to do it."
Did he tell that to you?
ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: No, that wasn't your question. No. No, he didn't say it on camera.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, he did.
Brennan is correct, Chump said it and said it publicly.
On NBC's MEET THE PRESS, Senator Adam Schiff weighed in on DoJ's Alaskan lawsuit:
KRISTEN WELKER:
Let me ask you about this big news out of the Justice Department. President Trump says he told DOJ to sue to block Alaska’s Senate race certification if Republicans lose. And just to explain to our viewers, the issue here is that the incumbent is named Senator Daniel S. Sullivan. There is another candidate who is on the ballot named Daniel Sullivan. And I think we have a look at the ballot right here. The argument is this could confuse voters. Does DOJ have a point here? What’s your reaction to the lawsuit, Senator?
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF:
No, they don’t have a point. And what’s more, they don’t have standing to bring this kind of a suit. It’s not the federal government’s business to run Alaskan elections. It’s Alaska’s business to do that. And they’ve already adjudicated this question. And the Justice Department knows this. But it just shows how complicit they are now in the Trump campaign to try to subvert the elections. Back in 2020 when the president was likewise trying to challenge an election he lost, he tried to enlist the support of the Justice Department. He told top DOJ lawyers, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to the Republican Congressmen and to him.” Well, they refused. Bill Barr crossed a lot of ethical lines, but there was one he refused to cross, which was trying to overturn a legitimate election. This time with Blanche, they’re all in on this disgraceful campaign. So this suit has no chance of succeeding. But the fact that Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are willing to go along with it, they’re willing to put their name on it, is an indication of how far they will go after this election is over to try to challenge the results. And the best remedy for the American people is make sure this isn’t close anywhere. Turn out in overwhelming numbers. Use every effort to intimidate as further reason to turn out and vote.
Victor Blackwell raised this issue on CNN THIS MORNING with Richard Pildes:
Blackwell: With me now is Richard Pildes, constitutional law professor at NYU School of Law. Professor, good to have you.
So, let's start with Alaska. The incumbent is Republican Daniel S. Sullivan. There's the independent Daniel J. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola on the ballot.
When you look at this case in Alaska, this has already been adjudicated on the state level all the way through the Alaskan Supreme Court. Are the feds trying to make a different case? Basically, what are they claiming here that would be different than what the state's already decided?
RICHARD PILDES, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, NYU SCHOOL OF LAW: Well,
they are trying to re-litigate under a different theory what the Alaska Supreme Court has already decided. So the concern here, as you described, is that there are two candidates on the ballot with fairly similar names.
The incumbent senator is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., and he's actually listed on the ballot as Republican incumbent. And then, I'm sorry, the incumbent is Dan S. Sullivan, who's listed as the Republican incumbent. And there's gadfly candidate Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. So, the concern is voters could be confused about who they're voting for.
But as you say, the issue was taken to the Alaska Supreme Court. The Alaska Supreme Court said the candidates have a right to run under their names, and the federal government is now trying to come in. And it's actually quite puzzling what they're trying to accomplish here. I've said this is the weakest election lawsuit I can recall seeing.
For one thing, the only basis the federal government asserts for coming in here is a federal voter registration statute. And that statute has nothing to do with the qualifications of candidates.
And then, in addition, even if one goes down this path, how in the world would the courts determine which people voted for the wrong candidate inadvertently? How do we even know which of those people are who voted for this candidate, let alone how would we probe the reasons for doing it? And the suit also comes way too late in the day, in the middle of the voting process. There's so many problems with this lawsuit.
[06:45:02]
So, I think this lawsuit has no chance whatsoever of being accepted.
BLACKWELL: Yes. I mean the question of can voters keep the Daniel Sullivan straight. We have an issue of doing it. I heard you have to fix it in your answer.
The way I do it is Daniel S. Sullivan. The S is the one who's already a senator. So that's how when I'm just having a conversation. I keep it straight.
Speaking of late in the day, let's talk about California. Because California says that this now requests to set aside ballots from about 20,000 voters. There comes after voting is already started.
So how does that influence the ability to even comply and the merits of this effort from DOJ?
PILDES: Yes, I mean, this is one of the several problems with both of these lawsuits. The government could have brought either of these suits many months ago and courts in general are extremely reluctant to allow lawsuits late in the day in the election process, particularly when they could have been brought earlier.
So here in California, the government is claiming that it's looked at the voter rolls in California and found 20,000 people that it claims are likely to be non-citizens and what it wants the courts to do because most people in California vote by mail is to set aside those ballots from those 20,000 individuals. So that disputes over whether they are in fact citizens could be litigated after the vote takes place.
Warren demands USDA reverse course after over 5 million Americans—including 2 million children—lose SNAP benefits.
“Together, rising food prices and cuts to SNAP are trapping more and more American families in a food insecurity crisis.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins, highlighting a new analysis by her office that quantifies the devastating toll of President Trump’s economic policies on American households. Warren revealed the “food misery index,” which shows that under President Trump, the combined impact of skyrocketing grocery prices and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has stripped more than $22 billion from American families since July 2025.
“These outcomes are not inevitable. They are the direct result of President Trump’s failed policies – and I urge the Department of Agriculture to act now to reverse them,” Senator Warren wrote.
Grocery prices rose 2.3 percent in 2025, almost double the rate in 2024. These prices continue to rise due to President Trump’s chaotic tariffs and illegal war in Iran. While grocery prices continue to climb, President Trump and Congressional Republicans have gutted SNAP, ripping away more than five billion dollars in food assistance from American households. The impact of these cuts will only grow, as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) slashed nearly $187 billion over the 2026 to 2034 period – the biggest cuts in the program’s history.
“SNAP participation is falling because the Trump administration has intentionally kicked people off of the program – leaving Americans hungry and still struggling to afford food,” wrote Senator Warren.
OBBBA has further restricted eligibility for lawful immigrants, capped future benefit increases, and shifted a substantial portion of program costs onto already-strained state budgets. One recent analysis of 28 states with a decline in SNAP participation found that, of the 3.6 million Americans who lost their food assistance, nearly half were children.
The “food misery index” combines the more than $17.2 billion in increasing grocery costs since July 2025 with the more than $5.1 billion in lost household SNAP benefits to reveal that the true cost of the Trump administration’s food assistance failures on American families exceeds $22 billion since the enactment of the OBBBA last July.
“Instead of reaching for tools to mitigate these threats to families and working to bring down costs, the administration continues to sit idly by, peddling false narratives about the drop in SNAP participation, while delivering a one-two punch to American families who are struggling to put food on their tables. With grocery prices and food insecurity on the rise, I urge the administration to work with Congress to immediately reverse its harmful cuts to SNAP.” concluded Senator Warren.
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