In a July 16 letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a "preliminary review" suggested there "may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote" in her state. Weber was skeptical—for good reason, it turned out. Three months later, the Trump administration reduced that estimate by nearly 90 percent, saying about 20,000 "likely noncitizens" had received California vote-by-mail ballots.

The Justice Department gave Weber and Dean Logan, Los Angeles County's top election official, 48 hours to determine whether any of the people on the government's list were in fact citizens. Otherwise, it said, Weber and Logan should segregate those ballots and refrain from processing them until citizenship could be verified. After Weber and Logan declined to comply with the Justice Department's demands, it asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring them to do so—a request that he rejected in a scathing opinion on Wednesday.

"Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch," writes U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee. "This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections. If Plaintiff's last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process. Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve."

The Justice Department delivered its list of "likely noncitizens" to Logan three weeks before Election Day. At that point, Los Angeles County already had sent ballots to 5.9 million voters and processed 331,000 of them. Logan said he was "legally prohibited" from doing what the Justice Department wanted because it had failed to explain the methodology used to compile the list, raising the possibility that citizens would be denied their voting rights.

There was ample reason for that concern. On July 17, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin averred that "as many as" 15,903 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada. The following month, when the DHS submitted a list of allegedly illegal voters to Nevada election officials, the number had fallen to 185—99 percent lower than Mullin's original figure. It turned out that every one of those 185 voters was a U.S. citizen.

"DHS has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote" in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, Mullin said in July. He was echoing President Donald Trump, who for years has grossly exaggerated the extent of illegal voting by noncitizens, often in service of his own vanity.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, for example, that he would have won the popular vote in 2016 but for "the millions of people who voted illegally," and in January 2024 he warned that noncitizen voters "could very well affect the next election." In a speech the night before Mullin's announcement, Trump asserted that the DHS had "identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections."

Judging from Nevada's experience, the actual number may be closer to zero. It is hard to say, because the methods used by the DHS remain hazy.

In the California case, Carter says, the DHS "purchased a voter file that appeared to reflect 'the actual voter rolls in California, that as of August 2025, may be used for the 2026 federal election.'" It "then 'enhance[d]' the voter data through a 'reliable third-party data analytics'" and used records maintained by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to find "an internal USCIS immigration number" that "may" correspond to each registered voter. "The matches are scored," Carter notes, "because 'the resulting data may be incomplete, outdated, or mismatched.'"

The DHS "then compared the potential identity matches to Department of State and Social Security Administration data to screen out U.S. citizens," Carter adds. "In the next step, a confidence level was assigned (where a high score supported a 'strong identity link') and a manual review was conducted for each match to 'determine which registered voters'" were "likely to be aliens." Then came "a 'quality review' to identify issues such as 'duplicate entries' and 'incomplete records,'" followed by "an 'enrichment process' that utilized 'additional unique identifiers' to 'improv[e]' the matching process."

The government did not initially specify the source of the "reliable third-party data analytics." But it later revealed that "the third-party platform it relied on was
Lexis Nexis," Carter notes. "It remains unknown how Lexis Nexis performed its analysis, such as how it 'linked names to Social Security numbers not available on the California public voter file.' Plaintiff likewise did not explain what its 'enrichment process' entailed or how it occurred. Plaintiff also provided 'no error rates' or 'validation against a reliable benchmark' that would enable a determination of the accuracy of its findings. Omissions of this critical information prevent an evaluation of Plaintiff's procedure, including how Plaintiff reduced its initial claim of nearly 200,000 alleged noncitizens to 20,000 individuals."

Potential sources of error include conflating people with similar or identical names and outdated records that do not reflect recent naturalization. Because it is unclear how the DHS tried to address such problems, it is not surprising that Weber and Logan did not want to rely on the Trump administration's list, especially given its pattern of dramatically reducing the putative number of illegally registered voters.

"It is well-documented that matching voter registration records with data from other
administrative databases 'presents numerous challenges,'" Carter writes. And given the potential for error, he says, "Plaintiff's allegations are not credible." He adds that the TRO sought by the Justice Department "would likely lead to voter disenfranchisement" and "would create a significant administrative burden for Defendants, leading to chaos and upending the election."

In any event, Carter says, the Trump administration does not have legal standing to seek such an order. The government's main argument was that California officials, by refusing to segregate ballots from people on its list, were interfering with its enforcement of 18 USC 611, which makes it a misdemeanor for "any alien to vote" in a federal election.

"Defendants do not 'interfere' with the United States' ability to enforce Section 611 by
administering an ongoing election in accordance with established State and Federal law, rather than assuming new obligations pursuant to a federal criminal law they are not responsible for enforcing," Carter writes. It is well established that state officials have no obligation to enforce federal law, he notes, and that they cannot be "commandeered" to do so.

Nor does the federal government need such assistance to enforce Section 611. "The very same day the United States filed its TRO [application] in this Court, the Department of Justice brought charges against 28 individuals" in California under that law, Carter notes. It is not clear how many of those defendants, who represent 0.0001 percent of California's 23 million registered voters, actually cast ballots. But "if fraudulent voting occurs," Carter says, "the United States should uphold the law and bring additional Section 611 indictments against those non-citizens it believes actually voted illegally in the current—or a prior—election."

The Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for conducting elections, subject to explicit limits imposed by Congress. But the Justice Department's actions in this case "are indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials," Carter writes. The department "has filed at least thirty-one lawsuits in federal district courts across the country seeking complete voter rolls from the States. Out of the twenty-six decided cases, the DOJ has prevailed in precisely zero."

In addition to "its failed attempt to seek State voter rolls," Carter notes, "the United States has also requested that States act based on the Executive's own lists." But "sister district courts across the country have cast doubt" on the reliability of those lists for the same reasons that Carter cites in this case.

On October 23, the Justice Department "sent letters to every county in California requiring them to set aside the votes of alleged non-citizens," Carter notes. "The letters stated that election officials 'risk significant federal scrutiny' if they failed to comply with the Government's demands. The government reiterated its threat in open court yesterday, stating that State and County election officials who do not comply with their letter risk federal charges under 18 U.S.C. § 2, which criminalizes aiding and abetting the commission of a criminal offense. The court reiterates what it said yesterday: these threats must stop."

The post Trump's Claims About Noncitizen Voting Are 'Not Credible,' a Federal Judge Says in a Scathing Decision appeared first on Reason Magazine.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a liaison at the military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with access to advanced surveillance technology, leaked files show.​​ The files also reveal ICE liaisons at Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) with access to the same tech, and an ICE contractor associated with U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, a hacker group calling itself the Department of Peace released a massive collection of U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel files, including ICE and other domestic security agencies. "They have our information, so it's only fair that we have theirs," the hackers wrote in a note attached to the database, which was posted online to Distributed Denial of Secrets, a platform for data leaks.

DHS told The Washington Post that it was "aware of a potential breach" and "working to address the situation swiftly and effectively." A website hosting a searchable version of the leak, ICEpick, was taken down after the DHS sent a letter demanding that the domain name host "stop serving the personal contact and location data of individuals who did not consent."

The files include an ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit chief who appears to oversee the agency's military liaisons. His subordinates include a "Combatant Command Program Manager" at SOCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida; an "HSI Liaison to USAFRICOM" in Stuttgart, Germany; and a "Senior Liaison to U.S. Southern Command" in Doral, Florida.

All of the officials named in the files are listed as users of "Penlink," "Falcon," and "RavenGo." The contractor PenLink offers officials the ability to track individual cell phone users or collect data on everyone in a certain location, according to documents obtained by 404media. FALCON, created by the contractor Palantir, allows officials to combine records from governmental and commercial databases, The Guardian reports. The DHS eventually phased out FALCON in favor of an in-house system, RAVEN.

The unit chief is additionally listed in a group called "LCR_Users." The acronym may refer to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at Liberty Crossing, McLean, Virginia. Two employees are listed in the DHS files with "ODNI" in their title and "LCR - Liberty Crossing" as their location. The first Trump administration reportedly looked into merging ICE into the federal intelligence community, but never officially did so.

The files also include an HSI contractor listed as "CENTCOM analyst" at the National Targeting Center in Sterling, Virginia. Unlike the other liaisons, this contractor does not have access to ICE's own surveillance software. The National Targeting Center is a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit that surveils international travel and selects passengers for questioning. CENTCOM oversees all U.S. military forces in the Middle East.

Although it has been mentioned in public, ICE's relationship with the military is shrouded in mystery. Of course, the best-documented relationship is with SOUTHCOM, responsible for U.S. forces in Latin America. Official press releases also mentioned HSI's participation in an AFRICOM maritime security training exercise in 2021. The connections to SOCOM and CENTCOM have not been publicly reported.

ICE did not respond to Reason's request for comment.

The DHS has an in-house intelligence office that is separate from HSI and publicly cooperates with the U.S. military, as well as the rest of the intelligence community. But HSI's "global footprint" and ability to straddle the line between law enforcement and foreign policy "make it uniquely capable of disrupting and dismantling the sophisticated groups and networks that we now face," HSI Executive Assistant Director Katrina W. Berger testified to Congress in 2024.

HSI is supposed to handle serious organized crimes involving the border rather than day-to-day deportations. However, the Trump administration has turned the directorate into an all-purpose domestic spying and enforcement arm. HSI is now running a massive surveillance operation against left-wing protesters, WIRED recently revealed.

Agents have reportedly been pulled away from investigating human trafficking and drug cartels to deal with immigration enforcement. HSI was involved in arresting former CNN journalist Don Lemon for showing up at an anti-ICE protest at a church, and led the raid against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) reportedly aimed at showing that her U.S. citizenship is invalid.

Last month, ICE announced upcoming contracts for a $100 million, fast-tracked expansion of its domestic surveillance capabilities, with contractors asked "to identify and assess relationships among individuals, organizations, locations, events, activities, data points, and other entities." Former military intelligence analyst Michael Wriston called the intensified ICE surveillance a case of "imperial boomerang" in an interview with The American Prospect. "These are the kinds of things that happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, for years. Now that methodology is being brought into the ICE space."

The post Leaked Files Reveal ICE Liaisons to U.S. Military Commands With Access to Surveillance Tech appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents slashed the tires of a couple who were recording the agents in an incident near Portland, Oregon, earlier this month. The agents then drove away without arresting or talking to the couple, video footage shows.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which released the footage today, says it is yet another example of ICE agents retaliating against people for protected First Amendment activity. In an administrative complaint on behalf of the anonymous couple, the ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon are demanding an investigation and answers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about why agents tailed, boxed in, and "vandalized" the vehicle of a U.S. citizen.

The stunning video does not resemble any sort of normal law enforcement:

"What happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying," A.P. and M.P., the unnamed husband and wife, said in a statement provided by the ACLU. "We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to. Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable. We hope that sharing our story will bring attention to their reckless and unconstitutional attacks on our communities."

According to the ACLU complaint, the unnamed married couple was driving in Hillsboro, Oregon, on the morning of October 7 when they spotted an ICE SUV. The couple followed the SUV to a supermarket parking lot, where there were also two other ICE vehicles. The couple lowered their windows and began yelling "This is ICE! This is ICE!" as well as blowing whistles and honking the car's horn.

One ICE agent grabbed a shopping cart and began approaching the couple's car. The complaint states that the couple heard the agent say something to the effect of, "Let's block them in with the cart." As the couple began driving away, several ICE agents began chasing after them on foot. 

The three ICE vehicles chased the couple after they left the parking lot, "driving aggressively and nearly colliding into" their car, according to the complaint. Additional video shows the ICE vehicles swerving aggressively in front of the couple's car and later unsuccessfully attempting to box in their car. "None of the ICE vehicles had their flashing lights or sirens on during this entire sequence of events," the complaint states.

The couple cut through an empty parking lot, and the chase continued down several more streets before the ICE vehicles turned on their emergency lights and sirens. According to the complaint, the couple continued driving for roughly a minute, fearing to pull over on an empty road with no bystanders. 

Video shows that when they stopped at a traffic light, a masked ICE agent exited his vehicle, walked up to the couple's car, stabbed one of its rear tires with a knife, and then walked back to his car. The couple's car moved slowly forward and into a turn lane before stopping again. Then the same agent got back out of his vehicle and stabbed the tire a second time before returning to his vehicle without attempting to speak to the couple.

"All three ICE vehicles turned off their flashing lights and sirens and drove off," the ACLU complaint states.

The complaint notes that the couple "experienced retaliatory action similar to that experienced by many other individuals across the country engaged in these same First Amendment protected activities."

"In particular, individuals around the country have reported being similarly tailed, boxed in, and threatened with or subjected to violence after observing, gathering information about, and recording ICE agents performing their duties in public," the complaint states.

Last October, ICE agents in the Portland area busted out the car windows of a U.S. citizen who had been filming them, dragged her out of her vehicle, and detained her for roughly seven hours before releasing her without charges.

The ACLU of Tennessee filed a class-action lawsuit in May against a federal law enforcement task force in Memphis for harassing legal observers. Memphis residents allege in declarations that they have been violently arrested, surveilled at their houses, pulled over under false pretenses, and jailed for trying to film the task force. In September, the ACLU of Tennessee published videos showing federal agents arresting the lead plaintiff in its lawsuit while he was attempting to film task force operations.

DHS and immigration officers have repeatedly accused videographers and legal observers of obstruction of justice and "doxxing," but civil liberties advocates say the DHS is flat wrong about the law: Every federal appeals court that has considered the issue—nine so far—has firmly upheld the right to record law enforcement in public.

The Supreme Court has also unequivocally upheld the First Amendment right to criticize or oppose police activity, whether verbally or through other expressive activity.

"The right to record publicly visible law enforcement activity is fundamental to our democracy," Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a press release. "Like many people across the country, our clients have been observing and recording ICE activity in their community. These videos have proven critical to exposing ICE's abuses. If we cannot see and document what our own government is doing on our streets, we cannot hold it accountable for running roughshod over our rights."

The ACLU complaint to the DHS Office of Inspector General and two other DHS oversight offices demands that the agents involved in the incident be identified, investigated, and disciplined. The ACLU is also requesting a "comprehensive investigation of a disturbing pattern of ICE agents retaliating against individuals who observe, gather information about, and record ICE activity."

The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Video Shows ICE Agents Slashing Portland Couple's Car Tire Then Driving Off appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Assume the following: A person unlawfully entered the United States 20 years ago and has since started a business and raised U.S.-citizen children, has no criminal record, and has never been found to be dangerous. Should federal immigration law treat that person the same way it treats someone who was just apprehended at the border? Should the law treat that person as if Congress had specifically made them subject to mandatory detention for criminal or terrorism-related conduct?

Under the Trump administration, the answer is yes. President Donald Trump's current policy treats noncitizens who entered without lawful admission as subject to mandatory detention without bond throughout removal proceedings, even if they have lived in the United States for decades and have no criminal record⁠. The executive branch adopted that position in new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance issued in July 2025⁠, reversing its prior interpretation of the same detention law.

The U.S. Supreme Court will now decide whether Congress actually required the result Trump is seeking. On October 1, the justices agreed to hear the case of Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha⁠. Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national, entered the United States without inspection around 2005. He later applied for asylum, received work authorization, and eventually bought a home. He operates a small construction business and lives with his wife and two U.S.-citizen children. He has no criminal record. But immigration officers still arrested him while he was driving to work in Massachusetts in September 2025.

After Cunha challenged his detention, a federal court ordered a bond hearing and an immigration judge found that he posed neither a danger nor a flight risk and therefore released him on bond while his case proceeded. The Trump administration then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and lost. Now the Supreme Court will have the final word⁠.

The Supreme Court is not deciding whether Cunha may ultimately remain in the country. Instead, it is deciding the narrower question of whether the Immigration and Nationality Act mandates detention pending removal proceedings for someone like Cunha who is present in the United States without having been lawfully admitted⁠.

The legal dispute turns on two phrases in one section of this federal immigration law. According to Section 1225, a noncitizen present in the United States who has not been legally admitted is considered an "applicant for admission." But when Congress imposed mandatory detention later in that same section, it used additional language, applying it to an applicant for admission who is "seeking admission."

That distinction may sound technical and trivial, but its consequences are enormous. If every statutory "applicant for admission" is automatically still "seeking admission," then the government can treat someone who crossed the border 20 years ago the same as someone arriving today and keep them in jail without the possibility of bond. If the two phrases mean two different things, however, then Cunha and others like him are generally eligible for a bond hearing under Section 1226, which permits both detention and release on bond or conditional parole⁠.

The Trump administration argues that if Congress has deemed someone an applicant for admission, that person must necessarily still be seeking the admission for which they are considered an applicant. But the administration's argument asks the Court to stretch federal law beyond its reasonable limits. Congress expressly deemed certain people "applicants for admission." It did not separately deem them to be "seeking admission."

This case, in short, is about textualism. And as the late Justice Antonin Scalia and his co-author Bryan Garner argue in their book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, one of the key principles of textualism is that "a material variation in terms suggests a variation in meaning." When Congress uses different words in closely related provisions, in other words, courts should hesitate before assuming that the different words mean the exact same thing.

In ordinary English, it is certainly difficult to describe a man driving from home to work after living in the United States for over two decades as presently "seeking admission." He is not seeking to enter the U.S.; he already entered decades earlier. The 2nd Circuit's unanimous opinion—written by Judge Joseph Bianco, a Trump appointee—reached this conclusion, holding that "seeking admission" describes ongoing activity rather than merely a retained statutory status⁠.

Meanwhile, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the administration's position in a similar case, Judge Dana Douglas, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, invoked the same Scalia-Garner textualist principles in dissent. 

The legal dispute, therefore, does not follow neat partisan lines. Judges from different ideological backgrounds have both concluded that the administration's reading goes beyond the words that Congress wrote.

The broader statutory structure also supports that conclusion. Congress has long required mandatory detention in Section 1226 for specified criminal and terrorism-related grounds⁠. And the Laken Riley Act of 2025 expanded those mandatory-detention categories⁠. But if nearly everyone who ever illegally entered the country is already subject to mandatory detention, as the administration asserts, then all of those carefully drawn separate categories for mandatory detention suddenly become superfluous and pointless for noncitizens who illegally entered the country, an objection that Douglas raised in dissent⁠.

History also clarifies the point. For nearly 30 years, across five presidential administrations (including Trump's first), the government generally treated people like Cunha as potentially eligible for bond. Trump only reversed course in July 2025. The 2nd Circuit thus accurately described the earlier interpretation as a well-established executive branch practice⁠.

Of course, past executive practice cannot override clear statutory language. But if Congress really did mandate a sweeping detention regime in 1996⁠, it is striking that every presidential administration since then has operated under a totally different understanding⁠.

None of this gives Cunha lawful immigration status. Nor does it guarantee his release or prevent the government from deporting him. Rather, it allows an immigration judge to ask a basic question: Is keeping this particular person in jail actually necessary while his case proceeds?

The administration may believe mandatory detention makes immigration enforcement faster or more effective. And Congress is free to adopt that policy if it chooses to do so. But Congress does have to choose it first.

Protecting the constitutional separation of powers is one of textualism's most important functions. Textualism is often described as a conservative method of statutory interpretation. But its deeper value is constitutional. It forces both courts and presidents to follow the law Congress actually passed. Sometimes that produces harsher results. Sometimes it produces more humane ones. But either way, it restrains the executive and judicial branches from exceeding their proper spheres.

Whether mandatory detention would accelerate Trump's deportation program is a question of policy. Whether it is just is a question of ethics. Whether Congress authorized it is a question of law.

In Cunha, the best textualist reading is that Congress preserved the possibility of bond and left room for an immigration judge to determine whether detention is necessary. That textualism, liberty, and compassion point to the same result is not the reason to reach it. In this case, however, it is a welcome coincidence.

The post Trump's Mandatory Immigration Detention Policy Fails the Textualist Test appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) insists that it has the right to search Americans' private data without a warrant when entering the country. But ordered to explain one of these searches by a judge, the agency is now trying to wiggle out from under the microscope, invoking its own data privacy.

On Friday, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia ordered CBP to explain the seizure of a local psychiatric nurse's phone and laptop at Washington Dulles International Airport. CBP argued that the court should seal this information from both the public and the nurse himself in order to protect "privileged law enforcement information."

Brinkema initially agreed to let CBP file parts of its response "sealed and ex parte," meaning that neither the public nor the nurse would get to look at them. After reading the filings, the judge declared on Tuesday afternoon "that most of the redacted information is not privileged law enforcement information and should not be sealed." She gave CBP until Thursday at noon to object to unsealing the documents.

"Without knowing what happened, we cannot assess the extent of CBP's violation of our clients' rights. This raises serious concerns about government improperly invoking privilege to cover up wrongdoing," says Jenin Younes, a civil libertarian lawyer and president of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, who is representing the nurse. "The court was right to unseal most of the redacted material so we can assess the extent to which the government behavior was improper."

Younes has stacked up a series of victories against CBP's electronic searches. Over the past few months, she sued on behalf of lawyer Jalal "Jay" Shehadeh and (non-Arab) journalist Max Blumenthal, both of whom had their phones seized at the airport by CBP without explanation. CBP tried to preempt a legal battle by giving their phones back almost immediately. Younes is still pressing to get information about what happened to their data.

Although CBP policy states that the agency will delete all data within 21 days unless there is "probable cause to believe the information contains digital contraband or evidence of a violation of law that CBP is authorized to enforce or administer," a 2018 lawsuit seemed to show that CBP was holding onto the data until someone bothered to demand its return.

Psychiatric nurse Muhammad Numaan Imam's case started similarly to Shehadeh's and Blumenthal's cases. CBP agents demanded to open his phone at the airport without explanation. He refused, arguing that patient emails and case-management software were protected by privacy laws. CBP then confiscated all of his and his wife Khadijah Mansoor's electronics. Almost immediately after Younes filed the suit on his behalf, CBP tried to argue that the case was moot because it was giving back the phone.

But Brinkema immediately agreed with Imam and Mansoor's "legitimate concerns about what was done with their electronic devices," ordering CBP to "explain why the devices of both plaintiffs were seized" and to provide sworn statements from "each person who handled any of the devices" describing exactly what was done to them.

On Monday night, the court published heavily redacted declarations from CBP Assistant Port Director Lauren Colgan, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) technician Caige McCabe, and CBP technician Ashlie Fisch.

"Mr. Imam and Ms. Mansoor presented valid, un-expired travel documents to CBP Officers in the primary inspection and were referred for secondary inspection," Colgan's declaration states. The next few sentences are blacked out. The declaration then recounts the couple explaining their early return from their anniversary vacation in Turkey and states that the CBP officer asked to open their electronics, without explaining why.

"Because of Mr. Imam's and Ms. Mansoor's refusal to provide access to their electronic devices, CBP informed Mr. Imam and Ms. Mansoor their devices would be detained to continue the border search," Colgan continues, noting that Port Director Christine Waugh signed off on holding the devices for more than five days, as CBP policy requires.

On October 17, a day after CBP seized the phones, it asked DHS headquarters for "technical assistance" with Imam's devices according to McCabe. "My examination of Mr. Imam's phone was limited to device specifications and high-level file-system structure," he states in the declaration. The next few sentences are blacked out. "I did not access or view the contents of Mr. Imam's laptop," McCabe continues. The next few sentences after that are also blacked out. "I did not access any medical information" on either the phone or laptop, McCabe concludes, stating that the devices were in his custody until he handed them back to CBP on October 21.

Fisch then received Imam's devices at CBP Laboratories and Scientific Services. Everything of substance in her declaration is redacted, beyond taking the devices on October 21 and sending them back to Washington Dulles Airport the next day. There is no unredacted explanation of what happened to Mansoor's devices.

Brinkema argued in her Tuesday order that only two sentences, both from Colgan's declaration, were legitimately blacked out. "Accordingly, the Court will unseal all other redacted information in the Declarations unless the defendants can show good cause why such information should not be unsealed," she wrote.

U.S. law gives border officers much wider authority to search for contraband in situations where normal police would need a warrant or probable cause under the Fourth Amendment. CBP argues that its powers extend to searching and seizing travelers' electronics without any explanation at all. Courts have given contradictory rulings on how far those searches can go, and the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in yet, leaving a gray area that CBP is happy to take advantage of.

Imam's case has resulted in "the most detailed explanation of what the government did with our clients' electronic devices—or it would be if so much wasn't redacted," Younes tells Reason. "I look forward to seeing the unredacted versions."

The post CBP Really Doesn't Want To Reveal What It Does to Americans' Phones appeared first on Reason Magazine.

If you're reading this, then the internet still works. But that's something that we shouldn't necessarily take for granted after this week's global cybersecurity meltdown.

"Think of it this way: someone discovered that millions of buildings in the country have the same broken lock, and now everyone knows how to open it," writes Matt Shumer in a lengthy post on X about the situation. "The lock maker has sent out a fix, but every building owner has to install it themselves, and many haven't yet."

That massive vulnerability was identified with the help of AI, but the growing capabilities of AI-powered hackers mean that vulnerabilities can be exploited much more rapidly too.

This is the world we live in now. In August, more than 100 tech companies signed a letter warning about exactly this possibility. On Thursday, one of Anthropic's top information security officers wrote that cybersecurity threats "are going to get a lot worse before they get better." Major banks are rushing to secure themselves after reports of autonomous agents operating inside accounts (though many of them may have been authorized by account holders).

This is unlikely to be the last incident like this. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says it saw twice as many "agentic intrusions" (hacking done by an autonomous or semiautonomous AI) in August as in July, and then the number doubled again in September.

Scary stuff, for sure. As is usually the case, however, prevention is better than panic.

Shumer's post contains many helpful suggestions for better online security—it is particularly important to secure your email accounts, since that is the gateway to so much of what we do online. Here's a 15-step plan to stay more digitally secure in the AI age. (And if you're really worried about everything falling to bits, Reason's got you covered there too.) If your devices and browsers have updates available, install them. And for the love of digital gods, don't click on random links in strange emails!

The man who (maybe) saved the internet? There is an old XKCD webcomic—and I'm dating myself as a very specific type of millennial by even referencing that—that seems to perfectly sum up what happened this week. Here it is:

Here's the craziest part: That's basically true! Except the one random person lives in Czechia instead of Nebraska. His name is Ondřej Surý, and The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel found him:

Surý, who lives in Czechia, does not work for the PHP Foundation. But alongside his day job as director of domain-name-system engineering at the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium, in a volunteer capacity, he maintains and helps automate patches for the coding language. His work, with that of just a handful of others, has allowed countless websites and organizations to fix these vulnerabilities quickly. Over the past 48 hours, he's become arguably the unsung hero of the entire internet—despite the fact that the only compensation he receives is from modest donations. "Ondřej will save the internet today," a user in the PHP Subreddit wrote.

In the war between AI hackers and AI defenders, it's still humans who are the heroes. At least for now.

---

Art of the steal. Yesterday, in this space, I detailed how voters are fed up with the Trump administration's seemingly endless stream of corruption. But it's been a whole 24 hours, which means there is yet another scandal in the news—thanks to a Vanity Fair article about President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book. In it, author Matthew Cole claims that Dutch investigators gained access to Kushner's phone with the help of Russian hackers. The evidence from the phone and other sources shows that Kushner has been taking money from the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to "push their agenda with Trump."

Kushner says the article's claims are "outrageous and categorically false."

But wait, there's yet another corruption story. The Justice Department is reportedly probing whether Trump ally Corey Lewandowski profited from his role as a top adviser at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Washington Post reports that the investigation is based on a referral from the DHS inspector general and is focused on "contracting fraud."

It may or may not be connected to other allegations that surfaced in September, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Lewandowski approached officials in Qatar and the UAE about being hired to help with "visa issues" and other matters.

In both matters, Lewandowski has denied the allegations. He's no longer working for the department, having been fired earlier this year amid a messy scandal involving then–DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was also canned.

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Scenes from Virginia: Federal prosecutors indicted state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D–Portsmouth), one of the most powerful Democrats in Virginia, on charges of racketeering and money laundering in connection with illegal marijuana sales. (Don't get me started on how dumb it is that recreational marijuana use has been legal here since 2021, but commercial sales are still forbidden. If it's legal to use something, it should be legal to sell it!)

Lucas pushed the failed Virginia redistricting effort and has been an outspoken critic of Trump. She plans to fight the charges. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, also a Democrat, said in a statement that the timing of the indictment, just days before the midterm elections, "further erodes the trust the American people deserve to have in the Department of Justice."

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QUICK HITS

• "The last thing José García-Sorto remembers after being shot in the chest is being pulled from his car, pinned to the pavement and handcuffed, his blood pooling around him on a Phoenix interstate. All he could think about was what would happen to his two young children if he died." The New York Times has a harrowing account of a Honduran immigrant who was shot by immigration officers last year. He's never been charged with a crime in connection with the incident, which suggests "the authorities did not find evidence that he had put anyone in danger."
• Phil Magness and David Hebert debunk the notion that tariffs can help "infant industries" grow and succeed in a global market.
• The Cato Institute's annual ranking of "Freedom in the 50 States" is out. Arizona takes the top spot. How did your state do?
• Is alchemy real now? A California company claims it has successfully turned mercury into gold.
• The World Series begins tonight, and it ought to be terrific. Despite low payrolls, Tampa Bay and Milwaukee were the top teams in their respective leagues this year. They are deep, talented teams full of characters worth cheering—Brewers' star pitcher Jacob Misiorowski is a huge Pokémon nerd; Rays' star hitter Yandy Diaz escaped from Cuba after being imprisoned there. And this is the first World Series since 1980 to match two franchises that have never won a championship.

The post The Man Who Saved the Internet appeared first on Reason Magazine.

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar will move out of her Washington, D.C., home that federal agents searched last week, she said Wednesday, noting that attention brought on by the raid has made her feel unsafe there.

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, a new legal battle is raising questions about the federal government's role in policing who is eligible to vote. A federal judge in California has blocked a Department of Homeland Security effort to identify noncitizens on voter rolls. White House correspondent Liz Landers reports.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Wednesday that the department is “always evaluating technology on the border” after receiving a military-grade heat ray from the Pentagon. CNN reported that the heat ray — officially called the Active Denial System — emits an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves which can reach a little…

On a Tuesday morning in February 2025, federal agents descended upon Ayala's Mini Market, a convenience store in Glendale, Arizona, that offered check cashing, money transfer, shipping, and cellphone repair services along with standard items such as groceries, snacks, sodas, and cigarettes. The agents, who worked for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), seized three computers, five cellphones, and business records, plus about $460,000 in cash and checks. They did not say why.

Twenty months later, the store's owner, Mario Ayala, still has not received a definitive answer to that question. Nor has the government told him what it plans to do with his property or how he can try to get it back. That Kafkaesque situation is unconstitutional, Ayala's lawyers at the Institute for Justice argue in a motion and memorandum they filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. The motion seeks the return of the property seized from Ayala's business, saying there is no legitimate reason for the government to keep it.

"The government can't take your stuff, disappear, and then never explain itself," says Institute for Justice attorney Betsy Sanz. "For over a year and a half, the government has been holding Mario's money and property. This prolonged seizure violates the Fourth Amendment and federal law. The government cannot hold onto your property indefinitely without explanation so it can eventually take it permanently using civil forfeiture."

The raid on Ayala's store happened while he was visiting his ailing father in Mexico, who died a couple of months later. After Ayala's wife and son called to tell him what had happened, he rushed back to Arizona, where he tried to figure out why his business had been targeted by the IRS and the DHS. That was harder than you might think.

Ayala "has heard nothing from the government since they raided his business and seized his property," Sanz and her colleagues note in their memorandum. When the agents left, they told Ayala's son that "the business would receive a letter within thirty days," the memorandum says, but "no letter came," and the government "has not told Mario why it took his property or why it refuses to return it."

The agents left a one-page inventory of the property they took, including the computers, cellphones (two of which belonged to Ayala's customers), documents, and currency, although it did not specify the amount of money. They also left the first page of a warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge, which contained no information about the crime they were investigating or the property they were authorized to seize. It referred to attachments that might have clarified those points, but the attachments were missing.

Ayala still has not seen those attachments. But on the same day the agents raided his store, they also searched 18 other businesses in the Phoenix area, all of which offered money services. Judging from the warrants served on three of those other businesses, which were signed by the same magistrate judge at the same time on the same day as the warrant for Ayala's Mini Market, the legal justification for the searches was suspected violations of 31 USC 5324, which makes it a felony to "structure" a financial transaction with the intent of "evading" federal reporting requirements.

The Bank Secrecy Act requires that financial institutions report cash transactions involving more than $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Although that mandate is aimed at money laundering, someone can be guilty of structuring even without evidence of any other crime if he deliberately tries to avoid triggering a FinCEN report by breaking up a transaction into amounts below the threshold. As far as Ayala can tell, the search of his store was based on nothing more than suspicion of structuring.

If so, Ayala's lawyers argue, the IRS agents who participated in the raid violated a 2019 federal law that bars the agency from seizing money when structuring is the only suspected crime. Congress passed that law in response to IRS forfeiture abuses highlighted by the Institute for Justice. "For the IRS to legally seize property based on a structuring offense, it must also have an added suspicion of some other criminal act," Sanz et al. note. "Yet the IRS seized Mario's property, apparently on the sole suspicion of a structuring violation."

That is not the only legal problem with the seizure. Assuming the government plans to seek forfeiture of Ayala's money based on an alleged connection to criminal activity, it missed a crucial deadline. The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) requires the federal government to notify property owners of attempted forfeitures within 60 days of the seizure. That deadline passed a year and a half ago, and Ayala still has received no such notice.

"This notice is crucial because it informs a property owner that the government intends to forfeit his property and triggers his ability to respond by filing a claim or administrative petition," Ayala's lawyers note. If the government fails to meet that requirement, CAFRA says, it "shall return the property."

The government can seek extensions of the CAFRA deadline "only if there is reason to believe that notice may have an adverse result," such as "endangering the life or physical safety of an individual," "flight from prosecution," "destruction of or tampering with evidence," "intimidation of potential witnesses," or "otherwise seriously jeopardizing an investigation or unduly delaying a trial." None of those conditions applies in this case, Sanz et al. say, and their client "is unaware of the government seeking any such extension here."

Another possible rationale for keeping Ayala's property is that the government needs it as evidence in a criminal investigation. But his lawyers argue that the seized items "have no independent evidentiary value."

The government "cannot claim that it is holding the cash as evidence of the suspected structuring offense, because the government—in the usual course—does not continue to hold the physical cash it seizes but rather promptly deposits it," the memorandum says. "To prove the suspected offense here, the government would present evidence documenting the amounts and frequency of transactions and evidence that the defendant intentionally evaded reporting requirements. No fact the government must prove to establish a structuring offense becomes more or less provable by the government's continued possession of Mario's money."

Although "the checks and business documents that the government seized from Mario may at first have had some evidentiary value," Sanz et al. say, it could have long since returned the originals and kept copies. As for the computers and cellphones, "the government has had ample time to extract and copy" any relevant information.

While the benefits of keeping Ayala's property seem highly dubious, the cost to him has been severe. The seizure of the checks and currency wreaked havoc with his business model, which relies on money received for transfers to cash checks, which in turn are scanned and used to pay the companies that handle the transfers.

"The search and seizure of Mario's property upended his business," the memorandum says. "He had to keep his business closed until March 1, 2025, to replace the seized computers and to figure out how they could keep the business open. He took $50,000 of his own money out of the bank so that he could keep cashing customers' checks. When that ran out, the business had to stop cashing checks for a long time, losing customers."

Ayala "also had to come up with $112,097.20 to pay the money transmitters to cover the balance that had accrued while he was away," his lawyers add. "Since all the cash and cashed-but-unscanned checks had been seized, Mario needed to pay this money to the transmitters on his own. Though he did ultimately pay back all the money transmitters over the following month, the consequences of the raid damaged Mario's business relationship with one of the money transmitters he had formerly worked with, InterMex. Today, the business can no longer offer InterMex as an option for money transfers."

Ayala's business "is now finally stable, but it is still not doing as well as it was before the raid," Sanz et al. say. "Mario has changed the way he runs his business because of the raid. He now scans every customer's cashed check to send it to the money transmitters as soon as it is cashed, rather than collecting [checks] and scanning them together as they previously did. He constantly worries that his business will be targeted again."

In the 20 months since the raid, the government has not filed a forfeiture action or even notified Ayala that it intends to do so. Nor has it filed any criminal charges related to the seizure, as far as Ayala knows. "The government has no lawful reason to retain
Mario's property," his lawyers say, "and this Court should exercise its equitable jurisdiction to order its return."

The motion relies on Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g), which says "a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property may move for the property's return." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Arizona, has adopted four criteria for granting such a motion: whether the government "displayed a callous disregard for the constitutional rights of the movant," whether "the movant has an individual interest in and need for the property he wants returned," whether "the movant would be irreparably injured by denying return of the property," and whether "the movant has an adequate remedy at law for the redress of his grievance."

All of those factors count in Ayala's favor, Sanz et al. argue. Ayala's interest in the property and the injury he is suffering are clear, as is the absence of any other remedy. As for the first criterion, "the government can neither forfeit Mario's property nor justify holding it as evidence, so its continued retention is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment," the memorandum says. "And its nearly 20 months of silence, without any notice or any forum in which to contest the seizure, offends due process. At every turn, the government has 'callous[ly] disregarded' Mario's constitutional rights."

Ayala immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1991 and struggled for years to make a go of his business, which was successful enough at the time of the raid that he planned to open a new location devoted to cellphone repair. That plan is now on hold because of the financial difficulties caused by the seizure.

"This business is my American Dream, and the government took years of my hard work without telling me what I did," Ayala says. "This raid hurt me and my family. I hope this lawsuit gets my money back and helps make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."

The post The Feds Took $460,000 From This Arizona Convenience Store Owner and Never Explained Why appeared first on Reason Magazine.

One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.

It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.

"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.

U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.

A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.

Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.

The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."

Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.

The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.

Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.

"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.

Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.

The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.

But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.

"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media. 

Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.

The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.

But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.

"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about." 

The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.

In late August, President Donald Trump's administration carried out its first deportation flight to Haiti since the Supreme Court allowed it to end temporary protected status (TPS) for the embattled country in June. "There are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian nationals…from returning in safety," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed in its TPS revocation, describing a country the State Department warns Americans not to visit "for any reason."

The Trump administration has eroded America's humanitarian avenues, including TPS, which shields migrants from deportation. As a result, many noncitizens may become undocumented and could be forced to return to unsafe places.

The DHS secretary may grant TPS for countries facing armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other disruptive events. TPS designations last anywhere from six to 18 months and may be extended. The government has designated 29 countries for TPS since Congress established the status in 1990, offering protection to Salvadorans fleeing a 12-year civil war, Haitians fleeing the 2010 earthquake, and millions of others. The Biden administration repeatedly made and extended TPS designations, but the Trump administration has been working to terminate them.

There were 1.3 million people living in the U.S. under TPS in March 2025, according to the Pew Research Center. By August 2026, the Trump administration had ended TPS for 13 countries, leaving 1 million people without its protections. Once someone loses TPS, he reverts to his previous immigration status, which is often undocumented. Over 600,000 Venezuelans, 330,000 Haitians, 170,000 Salvadorans, and 100,000 Ukrainians had TPS protections as of March 2025, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Critics often point out that TPS isn't really "temporary." That's frequently true: Although some designations have been brief, others have been decades-long. Designations for Haiti, Syria, Honduras, Nepal, Somalia, and El Salvador have all lasted at least 14 years, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

This says more about the U.S. immigration system and presidential power than it does about TPS. "In the absence of Congress acting to legalize what has become a long-settled unauthorized immigrant population, Republican and Democratic administrations, lawmakers, immigrants, and foreign governments had come to tacitly rely on TPS despite its nominally temporary nature," notes the MPI. Immigration policy is increasingly subject to presidential whims, and due to lengthy processing times and narrow qualifications, more durable immigration pathways such as asylum and refugee status are often inaccessible to eventual TPS beneficiaries. An immigrant-friendly president may use TPS designations to temporarily shield noncitizen populations, but an anti-immigrant successor can also revoke those protections. In either scenario, a TPS holder faces uncertainty.

In a rare bipartisan immigration effort last February, Reps. Laura Gillen (D–N.Y.) and Mike Lawler (R–N.Y.) introduced a bill to extend TPS for Haiti for three years. It passed the House this April and has been languishing in the Senate since. Its future, too, is uncertain.

The post Trump Slashing Deportation Protections Shows Why Temporary Status Shouldn't Depend on Who's President appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Trump administration's attempts to fast-track construction of the president's long-promised border wall through Texas' remote Big Bend region have ground to a halt amid fierce opposition, protests, and legal challenges from landowners and conservation groups.

A federal judge on Wednesday released an opinion explaining her decision to issue a preliminary injunction blocking border wall construction through the Big Bend area. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone found that the plaintiffs, which included the Center for Biological Diversity and several longtime residents of the region, had shown a substantial threat of irreparable harm if the construction project is allowed to continue.

The Trump administration wants to spend $7.5 billion building additional security infrastructure along a 500-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border running through the Big Bend region, which includes Big Bend National Park. The federal government began sending threatening letters to property owners announcing its intent to acquire necessary pieces of their land this summer, and it waived several environmental regulations, allowing it to put bulldozers on the ground inside the national park by September.

However, numerous groups and local landowners say the border wall project will alter their way of life and permanently scar one of the most rugged and pristine landscapes in the country. The project attracted bipartisan criticism and protests.

Cardone also found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin exceeded his authority when he issued environmental waivers for the project.

The injunction is a temporary reprieve for property owners such as David Keller, an archaeologist and part-time river guide on the Rio Grande River. The original plans for the border wall expansion would have cut through Keller's 10-acre property near Redford, Texas, putting a 30-foot-tall wall on the levee that sits between the river and the rest of his land.

Keller says the Trump administration gravely underestimated how much anger its tactics and attitude would generate.

"It's a level of arrogance—they're just used to being able to bulldoze over people," David Keller says. "They were moving forward as if they weren't expecting any resistance, but boy, they're due for a wakeup call. And they're having it right now."

Keller is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against the DHS by Conserve Big Bend, a coalition of landowners, conservationists, river tour guides, researchers, and other affected parties.

Keller says he's loved wild, open country since he was a child, and as soon as he saw the region in the 1990s, he decided he would find a way to live and work there, which he's done for the past 25 years. "It's visually magnificent," Keller says. "It's incredible. It's like no other place I'd ever seen. It's one of the last unspoiled places remaining in the lower 48."

Keller says it's where he plans on being buried, too, although these days he's unsure whether to say "plans" or "planned." The proposed border construction is an existential threat to the life he's built, he says, and if the wall goes up, he'd likely move.

"I didn't come down here to live in a cage," Keller says.

The proposed border wall would not only block access to the river for farmers, ranchers, and outdoors enthusiasts along the river, as well as block the view into Mexico, it would wreck "the whole feeling of the place, the historical cross-border culture that we've developed," Keller says.

So far, the federal government has not tried to seize any private property in the Big Bend region through eminent domain, although it sent letters to property owners this summer requesting access to survey their land and warning them that it held the option to invoke eminent domain if they did not quickly sell.

Both Keller's and the Center for Biological Diversity's lawsuits argue that the department's justification for building and expediting additional border infrastructure in the Big Bend Region are factually and legally incorrect. The DHS determined that the sector of the border is an "area of high illegal entry."

However, despite making up roughly a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, the Big Bend sector only accounted for between 0.3 percent and 2.2 percent of total border-wide arrests over the past 30 years.

Cardone cited the low apprehension numbers in her finding that Mullin exceeded his authority to issue the waivers.

"The unrebutted evidence shows that the Big Bend Sector is, by far, the sector with the lowest rate of migrant apprehensions along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, both in terms of gross totals and apprehensions per mile of border," Cardone wrote. "Therefore, if the Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry, so is every other sector, and the waiver authority would apply to the entire U.S.-Mexico border."

The post Landowners in Texas' Big Bend Region Fight Trump Administration's Attempts To Seize Land for Border Wall appeared first on Reason Magazine.

This is an escalation in a criminal investigation of US Rep. Ilhan Omar, in the final weeks of her reelection bid. She is a frequent target of Israel partisans and the Trump Administration over her opposition to Israel's human rights violations and the Israel lobby's destructive influence in the US