The Lawless Trifecta of Trump’s Mass Deportation Apparatus

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Retribution, Destruction, and Corruption

President Trump’s mass deportation operation continues to embody all of the worst elements of his second presidency: the retribution, the destruction, and the corruption, a lawless trifecta that subjugates immigrants while eroding the rights of American citizens.

The first handful of items in today’s Morning Memo captures different aspects of the lawlessness as manifested in developments from just the past few days. It comes as DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s supposedly “kinder and gentler” ICE is proving to be a short-lived election-year feint, not a real retrenchment. Two fatal ICE shootings within a week have a way of ripping away the mask.

While immigrants have borne the brunt of the Trump brutality, the administration has been eager to systematically use the powers of the state against protesters. The viciousness of the mass deportation operation has created its own feedback loop: spurring more protests which create more opportunities for the administration to crack down on dissenters. As you’ll see below, that has proven to be a very bad strategy once it gets to federal court.

Be sure to make it at least as far as the final item in the series, which is about the never-before-used Alien Terrorist Removal Court that the Trump administration tried to breathe life into last week.

Cases Against ICE Protesters Collapse

In a comprehensive review of hundreds of criminal cases against ICE protesters, the New York Times found that an extraordinary number of those cases have crumbled, especially when compared to the Justice Department’s typical 90% conviction rate:

The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them. …

The review, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that the administration’s use of the law has often been less about protecting federal agents than about providing legal cover to cow protesters and immigrants into submission.

FBI Called Off of ICE Probes

The FBI issued guidance to managers nationwide on Thursday that the bureau would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — although DOJ and DHS denied in a joint statement the change in policy, the NYT reports.

What’s the upshot? It’s not entirely clear.

The NYT casts the change as making it less likely that the FBI will turn up damaging evidence against immigration agents involved in confrontations with protesters, but FBI agents have been seriously constrained in their investigations since Trump’s mass deportation operation began, a point the NYT also makes: “Under the Trump administration, when ICE agents have shot and killed people, the F.B.I. has been assigned to scrutinize a narrow question: whether the agents were assaulted before the gunfire.”

So it seems at least possible that this policy shift gets the FBI out of the business of pursuing protesters at the behest of the White House — though its hard to imagine FBI Director Kash Patel having the spine to resist that kind of pressure in the future.

Stay tuned …

Protester Allegedly Shot by ICE Contractor

An employee of the contractor that runs the ICE Processing Center in Aurora, Colorado, was arrested in connection with the Thursday evening shooting of a protester outside of the detention facility.

Brandon Booth, 42, faces charges of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon in the shooting of the protester, who suffered non-fatal injuries to her lower body.

Mass Deportation Watch

• Houston: Video of ICE agents pursuing the van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo before they shot and killed him doesn’t readily show them using lights or sirens on their vehicles. White House border czar Tom Homan wasn’t ready to concede the point in an interview Sunday, but did allow: “If they didn’t activate the lights, then it — then there’s an issue there.”
• Florida: The Mexican national hit and killed by a semi truck while fleeing an encounter with ICE was legally in the country on a tourist visa and had planned to return to his home country on Saturday, according to an account given by his wife that has not been independently confirmed.
• Maine: DHS still continues to refuse to release the name of the ICE agent involved in the fatal shooting of Colombian national Johan Guerrero last week, part of a pattern of concealing the identities of officers involved in shootings. In a ironic twist, DHS provided a statement to the NYT on this practice — but “would not identify the person who sent the statement.”

Sign of the Times

Politico crashed a boozy yacht party thrown in D.C. by the Mass Deportation Coalition that drew former GOP Reps. Steve King (IA) and Tom Tancredo (CO) and former officials from ICE and DOJ, including the pardoned coup plotter Jeffrey Clark.

Medicaid -> ICE -> Palantir

ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn’t supposed to have with Palantir, according to new court filings reviewed by NPR.

Meet the Alien Terrorist Removal Court

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has existed since 1996, but it was never used until last week.

Seamus Hughes of Court Watch broke the news Saturday of its first use — and the creation of a bare-bones court website.

In its first order, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court rejected for now the Trump administration’s application to remove an unidentified individual but gave it a chance to supplement the record, noting that “the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration.”

The best reporting and analysis on this new development:

• Politico: Trump administration activates never-before-used ‘alien terrorist’ deportation court
• Chris Geidner: The Trump admin DOJ went to a secretive deportation court this week
• Steve Vladeck:  Here’s what we know, and why we should (and shouldn’t) be worried.

Judge: Firing of FEMA CFO Was Unlawful

In a very important decision on the scope of the president’s powers to fire civil servants, U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff of Alexandria, Virginia, ruled from the bench Friday that the termination of FEMA’s chief financial officer Mary Comans last year without a hearing or the chance to transfer to another job was unlawful, Politico reports.

The Corruption: In All Its Dimensions

• IRS: Kenneth Kies, the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official who was appointed by President Trump, “was forced out of his job after he warned that the White House was at risk of violating a federal law prohibiting senior officials’ involvement in IRS audits,” the WSJ reported.
• DOJ: The Trump administration continues to pull back across the board on prosecuting corporate crime, the WSJ reports.

Quote of the Day

“Well, it has — it has a lot, and you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out.”—President Trump, apparently conceding that his beloved Qatari Force One doesn’t have all the capabilities of its predecessors (a fact reported by the NYT that led to its reporters being subpoenaed in a leak investigation)

Mullin Threatens to Jail Election Officials

Following up on President Trump’s inane speech on election security, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened local election officials Friday with jail time if they don’t comply with the administration’s demands to change election policies.

2026 Ephemera

• Maine-Senate: In the race to replace Graham Platner, Troy Jackson has all but locked up the Democratic nomination after dominating county-level meetings this weekend, which prompted his top rivals — Dr. Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and Dan Kleban — to drop out of the race.
• Nebraska-Senate: After independent Dan Osborn qualified for the ballot on Thursday, Democratic nominee Cindy Burbank withdrew from the race on Friday, clearing the way for Osborn to have a clean shot at unseating Sen. Pete Ricketts (R).
• Minnesota-Governor: Far-right conspiracist Mike Lindell, President Trump’s pick in next month’s GOP primary for governor, is registered to vote in Texas, not Minnesota, the Star Tribune reported.

DoD Withheld Iran War Casualty Figures

The Friday attack by Iran in Jordan that killed two U.S. service members and left a third missing and presumed dead was not the first attack in the country during the Iran War. At least three other Iranian attacks in Jordan in the week before the Friday attack injured dozens of American service members and damaged helicopters — but the Pentagon did not disclose those attacks or the casualties and damage they caused, the NYT reports.

New World Record in the Mile

Perhaps overshadowed by the final weekend of the World Cup (congrats, Spain), Britain’s Josh Kerr broke the 27-year old world record for the mile:

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