Are We Still Out-Organized?
By E.O. Dean (Guest Writer)
What do we do now? Are we still out-organized? What can we learn from the past? What is our collective future?
Gordon Parks, Via 120lomo.
We are not out-organized. And they are desperate, deprived, and doing the most diabolically evil.
We are experiencing and bearing witness to kidnapping, human trafficking, incarceration, detainment, “black sites”, concentration camps, and enforced statelessness. The most disturbing part of this nation’s history, coupled with the everyday realities of the US-Israel genocide of Gaza, is reverberating domestically throughout the United States. The “shame”, secrecy, and gaslighting of the US’s contemporary foreign policy and immigration policy of years ago no longer exist. From the United States to occupied Palestine, there are no secrets:
Genocide is clear.
The intentions of forced displacement are clear. State-sponsored and perpetuated terrorism is clear.
Militarized white supremacist ethno-nationalism is very clear.
The Trump 2.0 presidency and the prolonged genocide led by the Biden-Harris administration have exposed this raggedy country for what it has always been. Although Trump officials were deceptive, the US administration's most recent talks with Hamas for a hostage-exchange deal and ceasefire negotiations, along with a ceasefire deal with Yemen, both bypassing Israel, demonstrate that the United States has always held the levers that started this genocide and, most importantly, the levers to stop it 19 months later.
The cartoonishly evil language, speeches, smirks, and threats over social media take place under the very real backdrop of 2,000-pound bombs, Israel-enforced mass starvation, murdered and mutilated children, and journalist and medical staff assassinations. And here, in the United States, with the complacency and collaboration of the media, every day someone is disappeared into the already unjust and very illegal sea of mass deportations and arrests for speaking up against genocide and Palestinian existence.
Beyond establishment Democrat 50501 protests actively not including Gaza and platforming “Hands Off NATO”, the Democratic National Committee is still gaslighting us. And along with Cory Booker's performative 25-hour speech (not a filibuster) and “sit-in” with AIPAC's favorite Hakeem Jefferies, Bernie Sanders and AOC’s leadership remains ego-driven and moot as they slimily add AIPAC talking points to the watered-down left-ish (you read it…) “fight the oligarchy” campaign.
After six months, our message from Kamala Harris is, “I told you so.” Former Madam Vice President! WE TOLD YOU SO. Along with anti-genocide voters, the Black Left, in particular, warned Harris to change the course of her billion-dollar campaign and stop pandering to AIPAC and the invisible “white women swing voters”. In addition to the Biden-Harris administration lying about working tirelessly for a ceasefire, Harris told all of us to shut the f*** up.
Then Obama steps in within the few days of Harris’s comment to say he could never behave like Trump during his presidency. When the Global South has receipts of mass deportations, bombed weddings, coups, and assassinations—but at least the Obama Administration wasn’t total jerks about its destructive and destabilizing US foreign policy and repressive border politics. To be clear, Tom Homan cut his high teeth within the Obama Administration–this is where he took on the title of “Border Czar”. Homan has recently bragged about the endgame of making deportation more automated and efficient, Amazon Prime-like, within his leadership in the Trump Administration.
What is happening? Well, every day, things get worse and a bit more complex.
As of April 6th of this year, 47,928 people are currently being held in ICE detention centers within the United States—this number does not account for those held in locations outside of the US, and targeted ICE raids during the months of April and May have left communities devastated.
The Trump Administration gave refugee status to white South African Afrikaners. The “refugees” arrived at Dulles airport on a US chartered plane on May 12, 2025.
Most recently, the Trump administration cancelled temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghans, in addition to immigrants from Haiti, Venezuela, and Cameroon, early this year.
Almost 2,000 student visas were revoked, which sparked one hundred court cases and decisions that required the Trump Administration to cease. As of April 25, 2025, the student visas of thousands of international students have been reinstated. However, the Department of Justice is working with ICE to create policies and a system of revocation and application denial that would be “less” controversial.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department are still rejecting visa applications for social media content that supports Palestine or displays any critique of the nation-state of Israel.
A growing number of university students and faculty members have become political prisoners through targeted efforts of the State Department headed by Marco Rubio, some in collaboration with their universities. Many are currently held in ICE Detention Centers throughout the US: Mahmoud Khalil (Columbia University), Badar Khan Suri (Georgetown University—released from ICE detention on bond May 14, 2025), Rümeysa Öztürk (Tufts University—released from ICE detention on bail May 9, 2025), Doğukan Günaydin (University of Minnesota), Alireza Doroudi (University of Alabama), Kseniia Petrova (Harvard Medical School), Rasha Alawieh (Brown University), Yunseo Chung (Columbia University), Leqaa Kordia (Columbia University), and most recently Mohsen Mahdawi (Columbia University—released from ICE detention on bail April 30, 2025). Those in detention have an array of statuses, from green card holders to educational visas.
Some doctoral students, such as Momodou Taal (Cornell University) and Ranjani Srinivasan (Columbia University), have been forced to leave the United States for the UK and Canada, respectively, on their own accord. Most are being detained and threatened with deportation based on their activism against the US-Israel genocide in Gaza, with Khalil, Mahdawi, and Kordia being Palestinians, and Professor Badar Khan Suri married to a Palestinian.
Trade unionists and farm worker activists are being targeted by ICE.
Melissa Ann Holder, an environmental activist in the United States from Guyana, was targeted for deportation for her activism against the Guyanese government.
Formerly incarcerated Harlem-based community activist Robert Panton, who arrived in the US at four years old, was detained by ICE during his check-in.
ICE attempted to enter a school to do a “wellness check” on children in Los Angeles—all this without the knowledge or consent of their parents or guardians.
A two-year-old toddler with American citizenship was deported by ICE to Honduras without due process.
Three children with American citizenship, one a four-year-old with cancer, were deported with their mother.
Police and ICE violently slammed down a 16-year-old girl, and arrested community members protecting the family that includes a few-month-old baby, attempting to stop a warrantless ICE arrest of her mother in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Georgia college student Ximena Arias-Cristobal was detained for a traffic violation due to a mistake by police. Her undocumented status triggered ICE, and she is currently in detention.
On Thursday, May 15, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on the legality of Trump’s Executive Order 14160, "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship", making birthright citizenship dependent on the documented immigration status of the parents.
A CBS 60 Minutes investigation found that 75% of the kidnapped and human trafficked Venezuelan nationals sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (aka CECOT prison) in March 2025 did not have criminal records. The 238 Venezuelans included a queer hairdresser, Andry José Hernández Romero, and a teenager living with his father in the Bronx, Merwil Gutiérrez. They were accused of being affiliated with “gangs”. Many are based on tattoos and clothing styles and, without due process, are being indefinitely detained in what is considered a concentration camp that veers on being an extermination camp.
CECOT is currently detaining Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a visa holder and Salvadorian national, due to an “administrative error.” Although visited by US Congressional officials, the Trump administration announced on social media that they have no plans to bring him back, which President Nayib Bukele has doubled down on this intention.
The Administration is floating the idea of sending “dangerous” US citizens to CECOT or undisclosed concentration camps outside of the United States.
In addition to Panama, Costa Rica, and soon Rwanda, to be added to the list of international detention camps, the US administration's attempts for mass deportation to Libya were thwarted by federal judges.
People die in the custody of ICE and at detention centers. Krome detention center in Miami, Florida, is the most notorious for abuses and neglect. Haitian national Marie Ange Blaise died at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, on April 25, 2025, after her medical complaints about chest pains were ignored by officials.
The IRS has struck a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to now allow access to the home addresses and employment information of millions of undocumented people. Additionally, the aviation industry clearinghouse is selling collected passenger data from billions of past and future flights to the Trump administration.
The State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are literally hunting people with numerical quotas (instituted in 2009) in places and some states that deputize militias and state/local law enforcement to find and detain people regardless of status.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was recently arrested by the FBI for allegedly helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade ICE detainment. ICE officials had an administrative warrant, not a judicial one, so she did the right thing and postponed their case and advised Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use an alternative exit. Flores-Ruiz was detained by ICE that day and is currently being held at Dodge Detention Facility in Juneau, Wisconsin.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, son of activist and writer Amiri Baraka, was arrested at an ICE facility in New Jersey on May 9, 2025.
It has been reported that the Department of Homeland Security is in the “vetting stages” of a possible Hunger Games-style reality show with contestants competing for citizenship.
A recently leaked Department of Justice memo from March 2025 documents the directive for ICE to break into homes and detain people without warrants.
In addition to early lower court decisions to attempt to uphold some sort of system of legal integrity with rulings in Maryland and New Jersey in favor of due process for Kilmar Abrego and Mahmoud Khalil respectively; the US Supreme Court recently decided to halt use of the controversial 18th century law cited for the mass deportations supporting lower court rulings in Colorado, New York and Texas. With immigration detention and “War on Terrorism” propaganda attached to US Capitalism, money is central. The Trump Administration is expanding domestic immigration detention camps. Besides an estimated $45 billion to expand ICE, CoreCivic, a private prison company, recently signed a five-year, $246 million contract to reopen a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
The US government is using the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 and the McCarran Act of 1952 (a stronger offshoot of the 1940 Smith Act, strengthened by a 1951 Supreme Court decision) to kidnap, human traffic, and detain. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 was controversial to Thomas Jefferson and Jeffersonian Republicans of the time. After mass arrests and high-profile trials, the early US government quickly planned to phase it out. Many saw the targeting of journalists and printing presses would break the less than 20-year-old nation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted the act in the 9066 executive order in 1942, issued for the internment of Japanese American communities into concentration camps until the end of World War Two in 1945.
Right now, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Canary Mission, and Betar International are doxxing students and claiming to be working with ICE and the State Department to hunt people down and make them into political prisoners.
In an effort to curb support from law firms, the Trump Administration is also going after lawyers and law firms using “anti-DEI” and new Civil Rights executive orders to create cover for any push-back. In terms of higher education, some universities, such as Columbia and the University of Michigan, have welcomed and shown no type of performance or disdain for the human rights violations we are witnessing.
The FBI and local police in Michigan have worked with the University of Michigan to raid the homes of pro-Palestine activists, seizing electronics and refusing to show warrants. And many universities, even when expressing push back, have shown they are complicit and ill-equipped to truly contend with what we are currently facing.
The Trump administration is currently attempting to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, stopping legal challenges to detention by US citizens and non-US citizens alike. A reaction to administrative losses in federal courts, this would make the courts ineffective and render moot the little protections and due process that the US Constitution provides…