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Updates from Adam Isacson (September 16, 2025)

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This one is long: it has been an eventful (and pretty bad) couple of weeks for "security, defense, borders, and migration" in the Americas. Since my last message, the Trump administration has begun illegal, unprovoked bombings of boats carrying civilians, tried to deport unaccompanied Guatemalan kids in the middle of the night, launched a campaign of raids in Chicago, and "decertified" Colombia.

We've been covering this and more. The content below includes links to the last two Border Updates, a podcast episode, analyses of the boat bombings and the certification decision, some interviews and a panel discussion, several smaller posts, and links to other readings and upcoming events. Thank you for reading.

WOLA Podcast: U.S. Drug Policy Takes a “Radical” and “Chilling” Turn. Is Venezuela in the Crosshairs?

(Posted Monday, September 15)

I recorded this conversation last Friday with WOLA’s Venezuela and drug policy experts, and we really covered a lot of ground. We talk about the big U.S. military deployment to the Caribbean, a serious related human rights violation on September 2, why this is bad drug policy, why the “terrorist” label is unhelpful, what might come out of menacing Venezuela’s regime, and what a better approach to some very real challenges might look like.

Give it a listen—I learned a lot just moderating it, and you will too by listening to it.

Here’s the text of WOLA’s podcast episode landing page.

Since late August, the Trump administration has sent a flotilla of U.S. warships to the southern Caribbean, in the largest naval display in the region in decades. On September 2, a U.S. drone strike sank a small boat near the Venezuelan coast, killing as many as eleven civilians. Administration officials allege the vessel carried cocaine, but have presented no evidence.

In this WOLA Podcast episode, Adam Isacson speaks with Laura Dib, Director for Venezuela, and John Walsh, Director for Drug Policy and the Andes, about the shockwaves from this escalation, both region-wide and especially in Venezuela.

An Extreme New Military Stance: Seven warships and up to 7,000 personnel now patrol Caribbean waters near Venezuela. A lethal strike on September 2 marks, as Walsh calls it, “a radical departure” from decades of U.S. maritime drug-interdiction practice.

Serious Legal and Human-Rights Implications: U.S. law authorizes interdiction of illegal drugs, not summary execution. “There’s a word in English for an act like this,” Walsh warns. “That word is murder.” International law allows the use of force only in self-defense or with the approval of the UN Security Council—neither applies. U.S. law and policy, too, prohibit the use of lethal force on civilians without a self-defense justification. That is so even if those civilians are labeled “terrorists,” if there is no link to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and no explicit congressional authorization for the use of force.

The Venezuela Context: After fraudulent July 2024 elections, Nicolás Maduro governs without legitimacy, with widespread persecution and what Dib calls “reasons to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed.” There is also a clear connection between large-scale corruption and the complex humanitarian emergency in which the country is immersed. Criminal economies flourish in a regime of state-embedded drug trafficking, but Venezuela is not the busiest route for U.S.-bound cocaine.

The Reality of the U.S. Drug Overdose Crisis: The U.S. overdose emergency is driven by fentanyl and other opioids “that come almost entirely through Mexico,” Walsh notes, “with zero to do with anything in the Caribbean.” At least as of 2022, 80 percent of cocaine also transits the Pacific route via Central America and Mexico, not the Caribbean.

U.S. Political Calculations: Trump administration officials boast of the strike and hint at more. They frame Venezuela as a “narco-terror” threat while simultaneously maintaining oil licenses, cooperating on deportations, and even meeting with Maduro earlier this year. Walsh warns the move feeds a domestic narrative of an “invasion” of migrants and organized crime groups to justify domestic use of emergency powers.

Regional and Global Fallout: Some Latin American governments show “striking silence,” Dib observes, torn between defending sovereignty and condemning Maduro’s abuses. The OAS and UN have issued only mild calls for de-escalation, reflecting both U.S. pressure and Venezuela’s authoritarian reality.

Both guests outline alternatives:

Cut the Financial Lifelines: Dib calls for re-establishing the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative to seize billions in stolen Venezuelan assets. The U.S. government should coordinate more closely with Europe and Latin America to track the proceeds of corruption and undermine the economic pillar of support for authoritarian governments with connections to illicit economies.

Support Civil Society and Rule of Law: It is urgent to restore programming previously administered by USAID that sustains independent journalism and human-rights groups now operating under threat, and to use universal-jurisdiction statutes to prosecute Venezuelan officials responsible for torture or other grave abuses.

Address U.S. Drug Demand at Home: Expand and strengthen harm-reduction and treatment—naloxone distribution, methadone access—that have begun to lower overdose deaths. Reject the false promise of militarized interdiction that decades of evidence show to be ineffective and costly.

As Isacson sums up, “From overdose prevention to supporting civil society in Venezuela to curbing illicit financial flows…the administration is taking key tools out of its toolbox” while swinging a military sledgehammer.

Other resources from WOLA:
Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

At WOLA – The Wrong Tool for the Job: Why Decertifying Colombia Would Be a Big Mistake

(This post is Sunday, September 14; the WOLA document is from Friday, September 12)

Speaking personally here: three years in, it’s hard not to be frustrated with the Petro government in Colombia. A chance to show the world an alternative model for democratic governance, security, and prosperity has been squandered by chaotic leadership, management failures, improvisation, over-promising, and infighting.

After taking power in August 2022, Petro and his coalition promised to set in motion historic reforms to uproot the systemic causes of the country’s armed conflict and lawlessness, like the government’s longstanding absence from vast territories, failures to implement the 2016 peace accord, collusion with organized crime, an unbalanced approach to illicit drugs, and one of the world’s most unequal systems of land tenure. They brought into government activists and experts with deep experience in civil society and ties to affected communities. They faced, at first, a divided and demoralized opposition. They (eventually) drew up security and drug policy documents that signaled promising strategic shifts, though they were more statements of principles than detailed plans backed by guaranteed investments.

They curtailed most harsh coca eradication campaigns, which tend to fall hardest on poor farmers, the weakest link in the cocaine production chain. But then they replaced them with… nothing.

The Petro government has not increased state presence or security in the countryside. Key elements of the 2016 peace accord that were lagging behind, such as aid to conflict-affected rural areas and assistance with illicit crop substitution, are still lagging behind. Social leaders and demobilized combatants continue to be threatened and killed at horrific rates, while armed and criminal groups’ control of territory has become more brazen.

These are not failures of the Petro government’s published strategies and principles, which frankly have yet to be tried in practice. They are the results of a frustrating failure to implement those strategies. Managerially, the Petro government moved slowly, provided little guidance and political backing to well-meaning but inexperienced appointees, suffered frequent and abrupt personnel changes, lacked resources to match ambitious commitments, and got whipsawed by abrupt edicts from a go-it-alone president who tweets dozens of times in a typical day.

Those are serious managerial failures, but the strategy itself is mostly sound, and the desire to transform Colombia’s coca and cocaine-producing territories is genuine. That’s why a “decertification” from the U.S. government, cutting aid further and guaranteeing a “no” vote from the U.S. representative against loans from multilateral banks, would be a terrible move.

While there’s no love between Presidents Trump and Petro, U.S. interests require that the relationship “de-presidentialize.” U.S. policy should seek to help Colombia pull out of its security and governance tailspin—and not adopt a new set of punishments that would accelerate it.

Here’s a new piece from WOLA that, while acknowledging the Petro government’s frustrating outcomes, makes the case for avoiding use of an outmoded law that allows the White House to slash assistance to punish those viewed as not sufficiently cooperating on drug policy.

While it still exists, the decertification process should not be used to shame and punish, as the message it sends is toxic and counterproductive. This is especially true for a nation like Colombia, with which the United States has long maintained deep political, economic, societal, and security ties. Decertification, especially without penalties waived, would be a deeply regrettable mistake.

Instead of decertifying, the U.S. government can help Colombia protect its people and weaken the dominion of criminal and guerrilla groups during the Petro government’s final year in office. The Trump administration can speak plainly about the failures of the past few years, but must avoid a “lost year” of stubborn estrangement while governance and illegal activity worsen.

The “decertification” decision came out of the White House on September 15. As expected, it puts Colombia on the "black list" but suspends the punishments that the law would apply. Let’s hope that this amounts only to a scolding, and doesn’t compound the harm.

Interviews about Colombia's "Decertification"

(Posted Tuesday, September 16)

We saw the expected result in Colombia: a drug decertification with a waiver (suspension of penalties). A symbolic scolding from the Trump administration. I did a lot of remote radio and TV, much of it in Colombia. Here are some embeds.

With Colombia's El Tiempo Live:

With Cecilia Orozco at Revista Raya:

On Univisión's "Línea del Fuego" program:

With Colombia's Caracol Radio:

With Colombia’s Blu Radio:

With Caracol again:

The President Shared Video of an Extrajudicial Execution

(Posted Wednesday, September 3, 2025. WOLA statement is the same date.)

Statement at wola.org

Yesterday, the President of the United States shared a video of an extrajudicial execution. It is the kind of footage that U.S. defense or intelligence agencies normally would be reluctant to publicize, because it appears to depict a clear violation of human rights and longstanding international norms.

The video’s 29 seconds are brutal. The viewer sees an open boat—a small craft, likely a piragua or panga—on the Caribbean Sea with several people aboard. The boat is proceeding on a straight course, propelled by four engines. Suddenly, what may have been a missile fired from a drone hits the boat, and it is engulfed in flames. President Trump’s social media post stated that 11 of those aboard were killed.

The video shows no evidence that the U.S. military forces deployed to the southern Caribbean tried to contact the people aboard, tried to board the boat, fired warning shots, or tried to disable the engine by firing on a part of the boat where humans were not present. The video shows no evidence that those aboard were threatening U.S. personnel in a way that would justify using lethal force in self-defense. In fact, it’s not even clear that the people aboard were aware they were being pursued.

Here is the statement that WOLA published about the incident. An excerpt:

What we have seen so far suggests that the U.S. armed forces did something that it has never done, to our knowledge, in more than 35 years of military involvement in drug interdiction in the Caribbean Sea: an instant escalation to disproportionate lethal force against a civilian vessel without any apparent self-defense justification.

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Congress made the Department of Defense the single lead agency for overseas interdiction of illegal drugs. In the decades since, Navy and Coast Guard personnel have boarded a large number of vessels, interdicting thousands of tons of cocaine and other drugs. WOLA has sought to monitor those activities, and we know of no cases of those military and Coast Guard personnel using lethal force during these operations without a claim of self-defense.

Using lethal force on suspicion of illegal activity violates the letter and spirit of more than a century of international standards and the United States’ own regulations for maritime operations against civilian vessels in international waters. These measures include the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Article 51 of the UN Charter, the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual, and the Joint Chiefs’ Standing Rules of Engagement and Standing Rules for the Use of Force (though key language in the counter-drug section is classified).

These measures all call for restraint in the use of force, especially lethal force, when the lives of civilian non-combatants are at risk: a gradual and proportionate response that carefully escalates force in order to avoid exactly the kind of outcome that President Trump’s video depicts. These standards explicitly or implicitly prohibit the use of lethal force when there is no self-defense justification.

The President claimed that the people aboard the boat were carrying “illegal narcotics,” though he did not specify the type or amount of drugs. But proportionality in the use of force is a fundamental principle of international law. Mere suspicion of carrying drugs, or merely being pursued by (much faster) naval vessels or other military assets in international waters, are not offenses that carry a death sentence, much less summary execution.

Read the whole thing here.

The evidence shared so far indicates that U.S. forces committed an extrajudicial execution in international waters. If so, those responsible, especially at the political and military command levels, must be held accountable in the U.S. criminal justice system and Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The United States must show that it is still capable of delivering consequences for an act that, if routinely committed by the dozens of other countries that now have lethal drone capability, would lead to widespread chaos on the open seas, making much maritime trade and travel too dangerous to pursue.

There is nothing to celebrate about what happened yesterday. In fact, it adds to the mounting sense of worldwide lawlessness and instability that threatens a century of progress in strengthening international human rights and humanitarian standards.

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 12, 2025

(Posted Friday, September 12)

  • Read the whole thing here. See past weekly updates here. View a topic index of 2025's Border Updates here.

I don't include the full text of the Border Updates here because they're long. If you'd like a separate email with the full text, you can sign up to this Google Group.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

  • Supreme Court upholds “roving patrols” and profiling: A September 8 Supreme Court “shadow docket” decision gave DHS a green light to resume carrying out sweeps and patrols targeting individuals based solely on “profiling” criteria like apparent race, ethnicity, language, location, or employment. The underlying lawsuit seeking to halt this practice continues, but six Supreme Court justices decided to allow profiling to proceed while the case moves through lower courts.
  • Elsewhere in the courts: Updates on the administration’s effort to swiftly deport unaccompanied Central American children; its agreement with El Salvador for paid imprisonment of deported Venezuelan people; a decision calling for detention of all who entered the U.S. illegally while their immigration cases proceed; and a bit of good news—perhaps—for Venezuelan TPS recipients.
  • Mass deportation in the U.S. interior: Updates on immigration enforcement surges in Chicago, Boston, and Washington; a new report on abuse suffered by deported Mexican citizens; a surge in ICE deportation flights to Mexico; conditions and deaths in ICE custody; the U.S. military’s role; and the economic impact of administration migration policies.

Read the whole thing here.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustaining this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

New Landing Page

(Posted Friday, August 29)

One of my vacation projects was to retire my personal website's old reverse-chronological-order “2000s blog” presentation (which you can still see here) and replace it with a proper landing page. The new “home page” displays featured and recent posts, along with handy items such as news links, my current status and availability, and the latest Border Updates and podcast episodes.

It took several hours to get it just how I wanted it, but before the advent of AI tools, it would’ve taken me several days.

Panel Video: “Migrar Bajo Asedio” with REDODEM

(Posted Sunday, September 14)

Thanks to REDODEM, a network of humanitarian migrant shelters in Mexico, for inviting me to join a first-rate panel on migration trends on September 2. The virtual event marked the network’s publication of its latest annual report on migration data drawn from its 23 member shelters around Mexico.

They asked me to talk about trends since 2024 as viewed from the United States. Unsurprisingly, I used lots of charts.

The video above, posted earlier this week, is in Spanish, but there is also an English version playing audio of the interpreters’ feed.

Latin America-Related Events in Washington and Online This Week

(Posted Sunday, September 14)

(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern. Here's the one posted Sunday, September 7 and the one posted Sunday, August 31—you can still chase down any videos.)

Tuesday, September 16

  • 9:00 at the Inter-American Dialogue and online: Haiti’s Security Crisis: Pathways to Stability (RSVP required).

Wednesday, September 17

Thursday, September 18

El Salvador: The U.S. Government Is Now OK With All of This

(Posted Saturday, September 6)

Jesús left his home and headed to San Salvador’s historic center to make videos of tourist sites. On the way, a police officer ordered him to stop and asked for his identification. It seemed like a routine procedure, but then things took a turn for the worse.

Jesús says that the officer accused him of photographing him, to which he replied that, even if he were, it was not a crime. Within minutes, he says, other officers surrounded him and arrested him for “resisting arrest.”

“The police will stop you on any sidewalk, street, or wherever, but if you dare to ask a question, for them that’s already resistance and they can hold you for three days, but they held me for 11 days,” Jesús told Expediente Público.

Anyone who knows El Salvador will tell you that, as awful as the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison is, many others are worse in the country with the world’s highest incarceration rate (1,824 inmates for every 100,000 residents: nearly 2 percent of the population and over 3 percent of the male population).

Jesús’s story comes from a piece by Expediente Público reporter Eric Lemus, published on Monday. He was sent not to the CECOT—from which nobody except the 252 Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego García are known ever to have emerged—but to El Penalito, a lockup on San Salvador’s southern outskirts.

There, he said, “There are cells that have privileges. Cell two is for corrupt police officers. They are in charge of giving you your three meals a day, passing on the package (of food, medicine, and clothing) sent by your family, and on top of that, they rob you.”

Lemus cites the Salvadoran NGO-in-exile Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (SJH):

SJH claims that there have been 435 deaths in state custody, in prisons, and that it has the autopsy reports for all of these deaths. They claim that many victims died of pulmonary edema, which could be related to possible torture.

The story features the brutal experience of two women, “M” and “N,” who spent two years in El Salvador’s Women’s Prison, in the country for which the Trump administration excised vast sections from the latest State Department human rights report. The police arrested them “at the beginning of the state of emergency, based on an anonymous tip.”

“N” says that at first she was taken to a police cell where she was groped and constantly harassed, especially at night, when the officers took the women out of their cells.

“Some came back crying, and you knew what had happened to them… They only forced me to touch them, but later, when they sent me to the Women’s Prison, the guards did whatever they wanted… Sometimes they threw sanitary pads at me as if they were a prize,” she laments.

“M” recounts that she was beaten many times until one day they raped her because she no longer had the strength to defend herself.

“It was as if they were preparing me because they made me do squats, run, and do push-ups. When I couldn’t take it anymore, they yelled at me to keep going and keep going. I fainted several times, and that’s how I remember one day they took me aside… and laughed,“ M. sobs.

”I met other women who were victims of the guards and who, in exchange for sex, received sanitary pads, toilet paper, and hygiene products… It was very sad to remember how they harassed the youngest girls,” she recalls.

That’s the behavior of a state. A U.S.-aligned state.

I send my praise and thanks to Lemus, Expediente Público, Socorro Jurídico, and the former prisoners who have dared to come forward with their stories. Many of us are listening to you. You’re not alone, and when we get through this incredibly dark—and still darkening—moment, we will have your testimonies on record.

Law Enforcement Masking “Tends To Be in Countries With Weak Central Governments”

(Posted Saturday, September 6)

Sometime in the mid-2010s I saw a police pickup truck in Ciudad Juárez carrying several cops wearing ski masks, and I was like “what the f***.”

Today, I stand a fair chance of seeing masked law enforcement if I go outside and take a long walk. This, citing me, is from Sabrina Tavernise at the New York Times:

‘Without Question a Bad Sign’

Outside the United States, masking by law enforcement has a long history. When it happens, it tends to be in countries with weak central governments, sometimes ones that are fighting insurgencies or drug cartels or, for that matter, political opponents.

In Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, the government worked with paramilitary groups — forces on the side of the government but not directly employed by it — that often wore masks. They operated at the margins of the law, according to Adam Isacson, a security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, and over time, courts and special tribunals have documented abuses they perpetrated. In Colombia, the state was up against a well-equipped and deadly foe: drug cartels. Anyone obstructing them had reason to fear for their lives. Judges wore masks to avoid reprisal killings, a practice that became known as “judges without faces.”

Law enforcement officers in Mexico sometimes mask, too, Mr. Isacson said, in areas where drug cartels have a strong presence.

This, below, was the first I’d ever seen of cops hiding their faces in the US, during Operation Lone Star in Texas in 2023. At the time, Texas’ Department of Public Safety told Marianna Wright from the National Butterfly Center that the cops were trying to protect their faces “from the sun.”

(That’s such a great photo, isn’t it. I’m in Marianna Wright’s fan club.)

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 5, 2025

(Posted Friday, September 5)

  • Read the whole thing here. See past weekly updates here. View a topic index of 2025's Border Updates here.

I don't include the full text of the Border Updates here because they're long. If you'd like a separate email with the full text, you can sign up to this Google Group.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

  • Court Halts Mass Removal of Guatemalan Unaccompanied Children: A federal judge and child advocates spent the Sunday of Labor Day weekend reversing a pre-dawn Trump administration attempt to repatriate dozens of unaccompanied Guatemalan children without the due process that relevant law requires. The administration’s claim that they were “reuniting families” was contradicted by the children and families themselves, as well as a Guatemalan judicial body’s investigation.
  • In the courts: Several other challenges to the Trump administration’s border and immigration policies reached essential junctures in the federal courts last week. They included at least partial rebukes to the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the nationwide use of expedited removal, cancellation of TPS for Venezuelan citizens, and the use of the military in Los Angeles. Florida, however, prevailed in keeping its large detention facility in the Everglades open.
  • “Mass Deportation” updates: A big Los Angeles-style migrant detention operation is imminent in Chicago. Operations continue in Washington. Six hundred military judges may be assigned to the immigration court system, despite their limited knowledge of immigration law. ICE’s detained population, 61,226 as of August 24, is probably a record. Questions surround a little-known Virginia company awarded a $1.2 billion contract to operate a big detention facility at Fort Bliss.

Read the whole thing here.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustaining this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

29 Days

(Posted Sunday, August 31)

From former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger:

Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger So Trump put the national guard on 29 day orders?! Why does this matter: They don’t pay full housing allowance and no health insurance until 30 days. What an abusive commander in chief. So Trump

Kinzinger refers to an apparent plan to stiff the National Guard personnel sent to Washington and elsewhere by about $2,500 per month each. Raw Story explains:

The reports started earlier in the summer that Trump was utilizing a loophole when deploying the national guard, and avoiding paying those individuals certain additional benefits. In June, Vote In Or Out reported that “Trump deployed National Guard troops on multiple 29-day orders—specifically choosing durations under 30 days to avoid paying full Basic Allowance for Housing Type 1 (BAH‑1).”

“Under Title 32 regulations, if orders run fewer than 30 days, members receive only the reduced ‘BAH‑Type 2,’ not full BAH‑1; full benefits begin only on day 31 and only apply from that point forward—not retroactively,” the group wrote. “By repeatedly cycling short orders—ending them on day 29 and restarting on day 31—the administration saved roughly $2,500 per service member per month, based on differences between BAH‑Type 2 and BAH‑1.“

Now, it’s apparently happening again.

Let’s be clear here:

  • The masked ICE and CBP agents here in Washington? They’re true believers, deeply politicized and aligned with this administration’s war on migrants. Zero sympathy.
  • But the uniformed National Guard, pulled away from their jobs and families with nothing to do but serve as political props? (Like those kids from Ohio I wrote about several days ago?) This isn’t what they signed up for. They signed up to help their states during natural disasters and other emergencies. Not to rake leaves here in DC.

I feel shame for the Guard personnel whenever I see them lately, standing around or walking aimlessly up and down placid streets. And this doubles it.

“Surprising”

(Posted Sunday, August 31)

From the New York Times, reporting on the Trump administration’s attempt (foiled for now) to massively deport hundreds of unaccompanied children to Guatemala:

About 2,000 children, a majority of them from Guatemala, are currently being held in dozens of shelters.

“I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” said the judge. “You cannot remove any children” while the case proceeds.

In the hearing, the judge expressed frustration with the government and her inability to reach its representatives the early hours of Sunday, before issuing her initial order.

“I have the government attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising,” she said.

“Surprising” indeed, as a 2008 anti-child trafficking law requires unaccompanied kids from non-contiguous countries (that is, other than Canada or Mexico) to be “placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

Being rushed onto a 3:00 am plane to Guatemala—despite many pending asylum claims, and ignoring potential harm upon arrival—is not at all what the law specifies.

Massively sending unaccompanied kids back to the country they fled without due process is flatly and shockingly illegal. That’s why no previous administration attempted it, and why this administration is trying to do it in “in the wee hours of a holiday weekend” to minimize the horrified response.

Big props to the immigration attorneys, at the National Immigration Law Center and elsewhere, who had to spend their holiday weekend urgently litigating this.

“I Was No Longer Dealing With Humans”

(Posted Saturday, August 30)

We talk a lot about “organizational culture” at U.S. border and migration agencies.

Yes, it sounds like jargon. But consider this August 13 exchange between a CBP official and the husband of a permanent resident mother of four, as reported by MassLive.

“That supervisor started off the conversation by telling me he could neither confirm nor deny whether she was there, or if she was transferred into another facility,” Rosa recalled. When Rosa asked why, the agent cited “privacy laws.”

“I said, ‘That’s my wife. There’s nothing private. I’m the person that’s going to sign everything in her behalf, and do everything,’” Rosa said.

When Rosa asked about his wife’s medical care, the agent cited HIPAA laws as a barrier to knowing her health issues. Taken aback, Rosa pointed out that doctors can share medical information with law enforcement when a patient is in custody, which is specifically outlined in HIPAA.

“He said a very disgusting joke after that,” Rosa recalled.

“He said, ‘We’ll notify next of kin if she dies.’ And at that moment, I knew that I was no longer dealing with humans.”

“I knew I was dealing with someone that is sick in the head, and this was the person who made the decision to incarcerate her,” Rosa said.

This is a rotten culture, reinforced by leadership. It didn’t start on January 20—far from it—but the administration in power since then is actively cultivating its worst aspects.

Everything you loathe or love about Donald Trump’s America, you hate or cherish about Stephen Miller’s republic of fear
A Guardian investigation into the Alexandria facility reveals a pattern of alleged due process violations, previously unreported accounts of neglect and abuse, documented health emergencies and long stays
  • Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Beatriz Magaloni, Does the Bukele Model Have a Future? (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stanford University, Foreign Affairs, Thursday, September 11, 2025).
El Salvador’s police state will soon face a reckoning
Working with special Mexican army and navy units, the CIA for years has been running covert operations to hunt down Mexico’s most-wanted narcos
How the Trump Administration declared war on Venezuelan migrants in the U.S

And Finally

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