Free Republic

The Trump administration is being sued by a Honduran woman after ICE detained her and her children, including her six-year-old son who was diagnosed with leukemia. Their story is just one of many of immigrants being targeted by the White House. MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin, Catherine Rampell, Anotnia Hylton and Elise Jordan speak with Columbia Law School's Elora Mukherjee who is representing the Honduran family suing ICE.

WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court heard oral arguments on Monday in what is likely to be a decisive lawsuit over whether President Donald Trump's administration can use an 18th-century law to speed up deportations.The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing whether Venezuelan migrants being held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, can be deported under the Alien Enemies Act.American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt, arguing for the detainees, said the 1798 law was meant to be used during wartime, and "the government itself is saying we aren't in a military conflict"...

Many people are wondering how Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist Muslim who wants to defund the police, globalize the intifada, and destroy capitalism, has emerged as the Democratic Party's nominee for New York City mayor, with leaders like former President Bill Clinton fawning over him. To understand Mamdani’s political ascent, you have to trace the red-green-blue spider’s web that brought him here. This isn’t a complete map — I've written a book, "Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Undermining America’s Freedom," to document that story — but it is a snapshot of key turning points over two decades of...

Louisiana's law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court Friday, according to the ACLU, a plaintiff in the case. Why it matters: The decision brings clarity to state schools after a confusing year in which state leaders and the courts have issued conflicting guidance on whether educators must abide by the law while the lawsuit was being resolved. The latest: A panel of three judges in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, widely considered one of the nation's most conservative, called the law "plainly unconstitutional."...

The inside story of the case that could set the movement back a generation.One day last December, a clutch of dark-suited lawyers descended the steps of the Supreme Court to a hero’s welcome. The lawyers, from the American Civil Liberties Union, had that morning joined counterparts from the Biden administration in asking the court to block a Tennessee law that bars doctors from providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery to young people who feel that their bodies are the wrong sex. In the plaza outside the court, L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups had turned out hundreds of supporters, who hugged, cheered...

Americans are divided over the “No Kings” protests, which were held across the country on Saturday, according to new polling. The demonstrations — which coincided with President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday and the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington, D.C. — were a response to what organizers called the president’s authoritarian actions. About 2,100 individual protests were held, which, in total, were attended by around 5 million people, according to an estimate from the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped organize the demonstrations. “Today’s protests are a resounding message that people across the nation will not be intimidated by...

No Kings” “nationwide day of defiance” protest’s official partners have bagged $114.8 million since 2019 from the Arabella Advisors dark money network and how professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier. The expected worldwide mobilization of protests .. tumult is a carefully plotted production organized by The Indivisible Project and financed by the progressive dark money network Arabella Advisors, which has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests. Since 2019, Arabella has dumped more than $100 million into the coffers of the official “No Kings” protest partners—including the creator of the official protest song book. ... The Arabella...

Los Angeles was waking up on Monday to another day of high tensions with Donald Trump’s administration after a weekend of protests over immigration raids in the city, with the president controversially ordering in the national guard and the governor of California saying the state planned to sue in response. Federal agents the day before clashed with demonstrators in Los Angeles as police used teargas and “less-lethal munitions” to disperse crowds of people who were mostly peacefully protesting against immigration raids across the city and Trump’s deployment of the California national guard against the will of Governor Gavin Newsom and...

Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran is facing legal action for his partnership with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Harran applied to take part in a federal program known as 287(g), which would give officers the authority to detain illegal immigrants while performing routine police duties. But, the American Civil Liberties Union and Community Justice Project says what he's doing is illegal in Pennsylvania. Steve Loney, the lead attorney representing the ACLU, said, "The sheriff is breaking the law by unilaterally and illegally over the objection of his county commissioners entered into an agreement with federal immigration enforcement to essentially appoint...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kentucky on May 30 dropped its lawsuit challenging two of the state’s pro-life laws, in a development Kentucky’s attorney general, the defendant, applauded as one that will save lives. The ACLU-KY had filed the lawsuit about six months ago on behalf of a Louisville woman who wanted to get an abortion, according to the Kentucky Lantern. The woman later traveled out of state for an abortion. ACLU-KY Executive Director Amber Duke announced the voluntary lawsuit dismissal in a May 30 statement and said the organization will not provide further details about dropping the...

A school board in Colorado cannot remove sexually explicit, profane, and “transgender” books from school libraries because the school board is conservative, according to a federal judge touted as the first openly lesbian judge west of the Mississippi. The ACLU’s Colorado chapter filed a suit on behalf of two minors, the NAACP Wyoming State Area Conference, and the Authors Guild, claiming that the school district engaged in viewpoint discrimination when removing the books. The judge granted a preliminary injunction in March, forcing the Elizabeth School District (in Elizabeth, a suburb southeast of Denver) to restore the books. Judge Charlotte Sweeney...

Between 2022 and 2024, the U.S. saw a record 43 percent rise in “sheltered homelessness”—staying in some sort of emergency shelter, as opposed to living on the street. That is shocking enough on its own, but according to a new study, a contemporaneous spike in asylum seekers accounted for a stunning 60% of that increase. “Asylum seekers”—as referenced in the study—are all recent immigrants seeking residence in the U.S., regardless of their legal status. Unsheltered homelessness has been on the rise since 2015, but sheltered homelessness had declined by 12% from 2007 to 2022 before its sudden 43% spike between...

The attorney general is asking an appellate court to lift the block on a new state immigration law. The law makes it a misdemeanor for adults who came to the U.S. illegally by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers to enter Florida. The governor and Uthmeier contend that the judge in the case has gone beyond her boundaries in calling on Florida law enforcement agencies to stop making immigration arrests. “She’s trying to exercise authority that she does not possess. Fine,” DeSantis said. “There’s parties to the case and she’s rendered a decision even though it’s a...

In a scathing rebuke, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, issued a blistering court order chastising the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for attempting to engage in an ex parte communication — a serious breach of judicial ethics — in a high-profile case involving illegal aliens detained at the Bluebonnet Detention Center.Ex parte communications are interactions where one party or their representative communicates directly with a judge or decision-maker about a pending case without notifying the other parties.

Four American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates filed a lawsuit on April 18 asking a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students who have had their visas revoked. Multiple ACLU affiliates and the law firm Shaheen & Gordon filed a federal class action lawsuit representing more than 100 foreign students in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico who they say had their F-1 student immigration status “unlawfully and abruptly terminated with no specified reason as to why.”The students include several at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, who had their student...

Newsdump Alert: The US Supreme Court deciding early this morning to prevent a deportation flight from Texas to El Salvador. The American Civil Liberties Union has sought emergency action... China remains a powerful economic engine its Gross Domestic Product grew 5.4 percent in the first quarter... "Now something happened this week that I think merits our discussion and that is that President Trump came out with a statement on Easter... Back to the early pre-commercial and pre-praise and worship days of Christian Music it's the 1970's sound... "When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing President Trump’s administration in federal court for targeting international students who had their legal status revoked. “The consequences of Defendants’ unilateral and unlawful termination are dire. The termination puts students out of lawful student status. Plaintiffs and the class face immigration detention and deportation. Plaintiffs and the class face severe financial and academic hardship. Further, Plaintiffs and the class are not able to obtain their degrees and work pursuant to the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program after graduation,” ACLU’s lawyers wrote in the class action lawsuit filed in New Hampshire. “Indeed, Defendants’...

This week, District of Columbia Judge Ibn al-Murderu ordered the restoration of the USAID funds designated for Hamas that he says "Secretary of State Marco Rubio has illegally canceled. The desire for government efficiency does not override the commitments made by the prior Biden Administration." ACLU spokesperson Bertram Petty praised the ruling, calling it "both correct and humane. Israel has cut off the humanitarian aid to Gaza that Hamas had been pilfering to supplement the contractual payments USAID had been making to the organization. This has made it impossible for Hamas to meet its payroll obligations to its fighters. These...

The Supreme Court on Saturday blocked, for now, the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under an 18th-century wartime law. In a brief order, the court directed the Trump administration not to remove Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. The high court acted in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union contending that immigration authorities appeared to be moving to restart removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Supreme Court had said earlier in April that deportations could proceed only...

In a Friday night hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said he was “sympathetic” to activists’ concerns over the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act, but he doesn't “think I have the power” to stop them.It was surely frustrating to the activist judge who always seemed to rule harshly against J6ers but has come across as extremely sympathetic to the non-citizen criminals that Trump was trying to send out of our country. A recent Supreme Court ruling tied his hands, however:US District Judge James Boasberg denied an emergency request from lawyers for alleged Venezuelan gang...