Free Republic

DURING 15 years of confinement in psychiatric institutions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Dimitri Gerasimenko was starved and repeatedly beaten. The indignities did not end with his death five years ago at the age of 30.Staff at the ramshackle asylum 50 miles from Bishkek, the capital, have never told his mother Raisa, 65, how he died. All her attempts to retrieve his remains have been met with prevarication, compounding her grief. “First I was asked for money if I wanted the body back,” she said. “Then I was told Dimitri had been sent to a medical academy. When...

Columbia University’s radical protest leaders, including Khalil, aren’t just anti-Israel — they want America to fall and are taking steps to make it happen. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are demanding the release of Columbia University student and pro-Hamas protester Mahmoud Khalil. While House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is accusing the Trump administration of “authoritarianism,” the Democrats are about to be embarrassed. Khalil is a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of more than 150 pro-terrorism groups I identified in my comprehensive study for the Capital Research Center, “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement.”...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a truly Orwellian society where there is absolutely no freedom of speech, absolutely no freedom of religion and absolutely no freedom of the press? You may think that the rules that you are currently living under are bad, but the country that I am about to discuss exercises total control over the population. In this nation, you can only choose a haircut off a pre-approved list, and smiling on the wrong day can literally get you sent to a prison camp. Unfortunately, once you are sent to a...

A judge this week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order, which mandated that transgender inmates who identify as women be housed in male prisons and that the government cease funding their access to hormone therapy.U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington granted the temporary restraining order at the request of three anonymous transgender inmates who filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive action.Lamberth found the three would likely succeed in arguing the order violates the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.Trump’s Jan. 20 order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal...

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said Wednesday his country will accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States, the second deportation deal that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reached during a Central America trip that has been focused mainly on immigration. Under the agreement announced by Arévalo, the deportees would be returned to their home countries at U.S. expense. “We have agreed to increase by 40% the number of flights of deportees both of our nationality as well as deportees from other nationalities,” Arévalo said at a news conference with Rubio. Previously, including under the...

A federal judge has ordered New York City to draft plans to hand over management of its Rikers Island jail complex to a third-party receiver after holding the city's Department of Corrections (DOC) in civil contempt for failing to meet more than a dozen requirements to improve conditions in its violence-wracked jails. In an opinion and order issued Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Laura Taylor Swain wrote that she was "inclined to impose a receivership" after finding that violence and death inside Rikers has not improved since New York City agreed to a...

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt says his state is creating a plan to deport criminal illegal immigrants who are in custody in state prisons, in a boost to President-elect Trump’s proposal to conduct a mass deportation operation next year. Stitt announced that he is directing the state’s commissioner of public safety to lead the effort to expel inmates in Oklahoma prisons who are in the country illegally, by creating a plan to deal with them. That plan will be delivered by January, and the state says it will consult with the Trump transition team and incoming administration to implement it....

Illegal immigrants across America who now face deportation in the new Trump administration may only have a short trip from their sanctuary cities before they’re shipped off back to their own countries. A new plan, currently under discussion, aims to double the 41,000 detention beds that Congress allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Illegal migrants would be held in such facilities before being flown back to their country of origin.

Honduras announced on Friday night the construction of a mega-prison for 20,000 inmates, among more than a dozen measures, by declaring a “security emergency” to combat the overwhelming crime. In a national radio and television broadcast, President Xiomara Castro and other members of the National Defense and Security Council (CNDS) unveiled the “crime solution plan” in response to public outcry over the surge in violence. “Given this declared security emergency, the immediate construction of an Emergency Detention Center (CRE) with a capacity for 20,000 inmates in the unpopulated area between the departments of Olancho and Gracias a Dios (east) is...

In a report reviewed exclusively by Breitbart Texas, human intelligence developed by frontline Border Patrol intelligence officers reveals the possibility of a formal covert operation being conducted by the Maduro regime. The operation is designed to infiltrate the United States using released inmates and pairing them with Venezuelan intelligence operatives to “neutralize” human targets within the United States. The report’s narrative, generated by the Rio Grande Valley Sector Intelligence Unit (SIU), indicates that released inmates from Venezuelan prisons have been directed to travel to the United States alongside Venezuelan intelligence officers to track down former Venezuelan military members, politicians, and...

Reprinted with permission from Tablet magazine. In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in...

A bill that would give people serving life without parole a second chance at freedom was brought back in the California Assembly Monday after a year of inactivity. Senate Bill 94, authored by State Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), calls for a second look at Californians serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The bill would allow people convicted of life sentences a chance to lessen their time behind bars if they have been imprisoned since June 1990, or for 25 years. Cortese says this is a chance for those convicted so long ago to have a second...

Bryan Kim, 35, who now goes by 'Amber FayeFox Kim', was caught having intercourse with 25-year-old Sincer-A Marie Nerton at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) on March 14. Months later, Kim, who identifies as female, has been moved back to the Monroe Correctional Facility for men. 'The reason for Kim's transfer was due to ongoing safety concerns,' a Department of Corrections official told the National Review. Kim was convicted in 2008 of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder for fatally stabbing his father, Richard Kim, and bludgeoning and strangling his mother, Terri Kim In March, a corrections officer...

A union that represents Michigan corrections officers asked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Wednesday to deploy the National Guard to help understaffed prisons. Byron Osborn, the president of the Michigan Corrections Organization - SEIU Local 526M, said in a letter to Whitmer that she needs to "take working conditions that have persisted and worsened" throughout her time as governor. The letter says that corrections officers have to work mandatory 16-hour overtime shifts per week, and have to run prison operations with "far less" than the number of officers required. Osborn said officers often have to work in isolated areas by themselves, jeopardizing...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied an appeal from California corrections officials who sought immunity from lawsuits claiming they acted with deliberate indifference when they caused a deadly COVID-19 outbreak at one of the world’s most famous prisons four years ago. The justices turned down the appeal without comment or dissent. The lawsuit stemmed from the botched transfer of infected inmates in May 2020 from a Southern California prison to San Quentin, which at the time had no infections. The coronavirus then quickly sickened 75% of inmates at the prison north of San Francisco, leading to the deaths of...

Ukraine is legislating to join Russia in sending recruiters into the nation’s prisons to bolster its military, as Moscow’s invasion grinds on and the casualty list grows ever longer. Ukraine’s Parliament has passed a draft law allowing certain classes of convicts to get out of jail early in return for military service. As noted, Ukraine’s ability to field enough soldiers to sustain the war against Russia is one of the nation’s greatest longer-term challenges of the war, its population considerably smaller than Russia’s and already disturbed and scattered by the conflict. Releasing criminals from prison in return for military service...

Amie Ichikawa spoke about male condom dispensers being installed in female prisons ... Amie Ichikawaregarding predators taking advantage of transgender policies... Gaines spoke to Ichikawa regarding the controversial standards of housing biological males in all-women’s prisons based on them identifying as females. ... "A large percentage of the people who are transferring are individuals the state has a hard time keeping safe because of their status that's not trans related; status with the gangs, being informants, just very problematic individuals. So they're coming from these level four men's prisons, they’re maximum security, and entering women's general population, which is completely...

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, declared on Sunday that “we can fix” the ongoing political turmoil and rampant gang violence in Haiti, equating the images of brutality from the island nation to the state of affairs in his home country before implementing a law enforcement crackdown in 2022. Bukele did not specify who the “we” in his sentence was — whether he meant the government of El Salvador or the international community in general. He later commented that “experts” had declared similar violence in El Salvador “intrinsic” to the country, and the eradication of organized criminal violence from...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Authorities in Haiti have ordered a nighttime curfew after an explosion of violence when gang gunmen overran the two biggest prisons and freed thousands of inmates over the weekend. A 72-hour state of emergency began Sunday night. The government said it would set out to find the killers, kidnappers and other criminals who fled. “The police were ordered to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend all offenders,” said a statement from Finance Minister Patrick Boivert, the acting prime minister. Gangs already were estimated to control up to 80% of...

More than 30 workers with the Kentucky Department of Corrections were caught having sex with inmates behind bars during a 16-month period, while others were found smuggling drugs and guns. A shocking investigation by Herald-Leader revealed 59 cases of employee-on-inmate sexual offenses in the past five years, with 35 cases involving possible criminal charges. Most recently, 42-year-old Amanda Kulka was charged with third-degree sodomy earlier this month for allegedly having a sexual relationship with an inmate half her age. The inmate, who has not been identified, was serving a lengthy sentence for burglary, assault and theft, according to the outlet....