L.A. Dodgers Stand Up to ICE in Stunning Move as Trump War Escalates

The Los Angeles Dodgers blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering their stadium on Thursday, as Donald Trump escalates his crackdown on immigrants in the city of angels.

“This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots,” the L.A. Dodgers said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that masked agents and DHS officials were stationed outside Dodger Stadium in the morning, near the downtown parking lot entrance. It’s unclear whether anyone in the area was arrested. A source told the Times that the agents had gathered near the stadium for a briefing, but they left by the time images of their presence began to spread on social media.

Protesters arrived at Dodger Stadium after the agents’ photos and videos spread on social media, and the source told the Times that the Dodgers asked police to intervene after demonstrators arrived. Police officers formed a line in front of one of the stadium entrances, and the protest thinned out, LAist reported.

The L.A. Dodgers denying ICE agents entry to the stadium is a major move—especially as Trump has set his sights on Los Angeles as he ramps up his immigration war. Earlier this month, Trump sent both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles to help ICE carry out its immigration raids and to crush the anti-ICE protests that had broken out in the city.

The Trump administration has found a new way to block Democrats from highlighting the reportedly appalling conditions at ICE facilities: flout the law.

The Department of Homeland Security is imposing new restrictions on visits that members of Congress and their staff can make to ICE facilities, in violation of federal law. Under the yearly appropriations act, sitting members of Congress are allowed to enter any DHS facility being used to “detain or otherwise house aliens” without providing prior notice in order to conduct an oversight visit.

But under new rules released earlier this month, lawmakers must provide ICE with at least 72 hours’ notice before visiting a facility. Previously, congressional staffers only needed to give 24 hours’ notice. The new guidance also gives ICE the right to “deny a request or otherwise cancel, reschedule or terminate a tour or visit” for a number of reasons, including “operational concerns” or if ICE officials or facility managers “deem it appropriate.”

Representative Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the policy “an affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”

“There is no valid or legal reason for denying Member access to ICE facilities and DHS’s ever-changing justifications prove this,” Thompson said in a statement. “To be clear, there is no agency or department that is ‘too busy’ for oversight. If ICE has nothing to hide, DHS must make its facilities available.”

The policy change comes amid disturbing trends both inside and outside ICE facilities. Since Donald Trump took office, immigrant detentions have ramped up rapidly, with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanding ICE make upward of 3,000 arrests per day. The arrested people—very few of whom are the “violent criminals” Trump promised to deport and some of whom are American citizens—are reportedly being held in appalling conditions.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of Congress who have attempted to enter ICE facilities on oversight visits have been denied entry. Representatives Maxine Waters and Judy Chu were denied entry on separate visits to California facilities, while Representatives Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman were blocked from entering an ICE office in New York. Representatives Delia Ramirez, Chuy Garcia, Danny Davis, and Jonathan Jackson were also kept out of an ICE center in Chicago for two days in a row.

The most dramatic visit was in New Jersey, when Representatives LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez attempted to enter an ICE facility in Newark. Law enforcement agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was with the legislators and was ultimately charged with trespassing.

New Jersey acting attorney general and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba later dropped the charges against Baraka, only to charge McIver with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

McIver has slammed the charges as “purely political,” warning they were intended to “criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”

The Trump administration is reportedly considering nuking Iran.

The Guardian on Wednesday claimed that the U.S. military has reservations regarding the success of using a bunker-buster bomb, a nonnuclear weapon, to eliminate Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep in a mountain. Two defense officials were reportedly briefed that only a tactical nuclear weapon could reach the facility, but The Guardian noted that Trump is not considering using a tactical nuke.

On Thursday, Fox News senior White House correspondent Jaqui Heinrich reported that the White House told her otherwise.

“I was just told by a top official here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the U.S. military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Fordo,” Heinrich said.

After days of bombings and further escalation from Israel and the U.S., Trump is now openly floating nuking a country of 90 million to stop it from building the nukes the West has claimed it’s been building for decades. This disgusting provocation would leave countless innocents dead, poison the region for decades, and almost certainly lead to even deeper international conflict. All this from a president who ran on a promise to end endless wars and bring peace to the Middle East.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wouldn’t “engage in hypotheticals” when asked two major questions on Trump’s plans for Iran.

First, she was asked whether Trump would circumvent Congress to strike Iran.

“[If] the U.S. were to take some type of military action, would the president go to Congress to seek war authority?” a reporter asked Leavitt at her Thursday press conference, referring to the power afforded to Congress by the Constitution.

“I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals. I gave you the statement from the president, he’ll make a decision in two weeks,” she responded.

Leavitt referred to another valid question as a worthless hypothetical again a minute later, when asked about Iran potentially retaliating with an attempt on the president’s life, as it has been accused of doing in the past.

“As for your question regarding Iranian retaliation, I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals again. But I can assure the American public and the world that this administration is prepared and ready to defend American interests and assets, not just in the region but here on our homeland as well,” she said.

The Trump administration has already been supporting Israeli intelligence and helped them shoot Iranian missiles down. The United States is already at least tangentially involved, while seeming to inch closer to full participation by the day. These “hypotheticals” that Leavitt shirks are being asked because they appear to be extremely likely outcomes, not just some random scenario that reporters are trying to sensationalize. It’s deeply troubling that the press secretary is dodging questions about whether the president will respect congressional war powers or launch us into another one of Israel’s wars, leaving a massive door open for Trump to avoid future accountability.

The world is on edge waiting for Donald Trump to decide if he will order the U.S. military to attack Iran. And according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, everyone will have to wait a little longer—two weeks, to be exact.

Leavitt revealed Trump’s decision-making timeline during a press briefing at the White House Thursday.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Leavitt said, reading out a statement from Trump.

A reporter then pointed out that Trump often sets two-week deadlines only to move them to suit his needs, as he has done while tepidly trying to convince Russia to stop its war in Ukraine.

“How can we be sure that he’s going to stick to this one on making the decision on Iran?” asked AFP’s Danny Kemp, referring to a similar two-week deadline Trump has repeatedly given Russia to stop bombing Ukraine (with no tangible results).

Leavitt stammered as she claimed that Iran negotiations and Russia-Ukraine negotiations were completely different before pivoting to a tried-and-true fallback: blaming Joe Biden.

Trump has previously claimed that Iranian officials want to come to Washington and negotiate an end to Israel’s war, which has so far killed at least 639 people in Iran, according to human rights groups.

Tehran, for its part, has said that “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

“The only thing more despicable than [Trump’s] lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader,” the Iranian mission to the U.N. wrote on X Wednesday.

Either way, making a people under attack wait two weeks to see if they will face further bombardment is a bonkers decision. It also marks a significant change in tone for Trump, who has so far indicated he is open to attacking Iran and has repeatedly demanded “unconditional surrender” from the Middle Eastern nation. But maybe he’s content to sit back and let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do all the dirty work.