Top ICE Official Describes Who’s a Fair Target in Stunning Interview

ICE agents believe they have the authority to interrogate anyone en route to a “target.”

That’s what a senior agency official, Marcos Charles, told Cecilia Vega on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday. Vega had asked Charles about how ICE has been carrying out its stated goal of targeted enforcement, noting that the agency appeared to be stopping and detaining people simply because they looked Somali or Latino. 

“Our officers are—are conducting targeted enforcement looking for the worst of the worst. If they encounter anybody in the area of which they’re operating, they are OK to talk to those people. They’ve been authorized to talk to anybody that’s around there and establish  citizenship,” Charles said. Vega pointed out that this didn’t seem targeted. 

“If they were in that area looking for a target, and they were en route or coming from that target and encountered that individual, they are authorized to talk to somebody and speak to somebody—” Charles said, before Vega interrupted, confused.

“How do you define the area? Officers are walking down the street, driving down the street. The entire city of Minneapolis is everybody, potentially,” Vega asked, wondering if the entire city was under suspicion. 

“Nobody’s under suspicion, but we’re looking for those targets. And, again, if we walk—encounter somebody, as we’re walking up to a building, as we’re en route to that building, that’s still part of the operation as they proceed to that target,” Charles said. 

Charles, who is the acting associate director of enforcement and removal Operations for ICE,  basically confirmed that ICE operates under the assumption that nearly everyone is fair game for arrest if the agents on the scene think someone is an undocumented immigrant. This explains how ICE agents in Minnesota have been trying to get the state’s residents to racially profile their neighbors, asking them to point out their Asian neighbors. 

In July, President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said that ICE agents have the right to detain anyone for any reason, brazenly admitting that the agency uses racial profiling. On Sunday, ICE agents dragged a half-naked man out of his Saint Paul home into the freezing cold, only to release him hours later once they realized he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record. 

President Donald Trump has pocketed at least $1.4 billion since reentering the White House one year ago, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Without a doubt, Trump’s biggest moneymaker has been his family’s various cryptocurrency grifts, which have reportedly earned at least $867 million. Trump’s cryptocurrencies allow his family to essentially receive bribes outside of the public eye that can directly influence U.S. policies.

For example, just two weeks after a foreign investment firm backed by the United Arab Emirates promised $2 billion for Trump’s World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance platform that is majority owned by a Trump business entity, the president greenlit the country’s access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips.

Trump has also raked in at least $90.5 million from major technology and media companies, as part of a rash of settlements from lawsuits waged from the Oval Office—in order to make good with a president now overseeing their industries.

Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit over the edit of an interview with Kamala Harris, and weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission greenlit Paramount’s merger to Skydance. Other companies also offered settlements as tithes to the new king. Meta agreed to pay $25 million, ABC News agreed to pay $16 million, X agreed to pay $10 million, and YouTube agreed to pay $25.4 million.

Even companies Trump didn’t sue ran at him with fists full of cash: Amazon paid the Trumps a whopping $28 million for Melania, the documentary about the first lady—far more than it’s ever paid for similar projects.

The Trump Organization has also raked in at least $23 million in licensing fees from its development projects around the world, which go hand-in-hand with the president’s diplomatic relations. As Trump has cozied up with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his family’s company has projects going up in Jeddah, Riyadh, Diriyah, and the Maldives. In Vietnam, the Trump administration agreed to lower tariffs after Vietnamese officials illegally fast-tracked construction on a $1.5 billion Trump golf complex outside of Hanoi.

While Americans have been struggling against a weakening job market, soaring prices, and steadily increasing inflation, Trump has easily netted 16,822 times the median U.S. household income. Is it any surprise that a recent poll found that only 36 percent of Americans said Trump has the right priorities, down from 45 percent at the beginning of his term? Looking at these numbers, and the sweeping corruption they suggest, it should probably be zero.

Authorities are searching for a suspect in the shooting of Judge Stephen Meyer and his wife, Kimberly, who were targeted in their Indiana home on Sunday. Judge Meyer was wounded in the arm, and his wife in her hip. Both are in stable condition.

Lafayette police responded to reports of a shot fired at 2:17 p.m. on Sunday, and a caller notified the police that a man in disguise knocked on the Meyers’ door claiming to have found their dog, before shooting.

“I want to ensure the community that every available resource is being used to apprehend the individual(s) responsible for this senseless unacceptable act of violence,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said in a press release. “I have tremendous confidence in the Lafayette Police Department and I want to thank all of the local, state and federal agencies who are assisting in this investigation.”

While no motive has been established, the shooting of Meyer—a Democratic Tippecanoe County Superior Court judge—would be one of many threats and acts of violence against officials that have marked the first year of President Trump’s second term. And it’s put other local judges on edge.

“I worry about the safety of all our judges,” Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote in a letter on Sunday evening. “As you work to peacefully resolve more than 1 million cases a year, you must not only feel safe, you must also be safe. Any violence against a judge or a judge’s family is completely unacceptable. As public servants, you are dedicated to the rule of law.… I know you join me in praying for Steve and Kim and their speedy recovery.”

Donald Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” is already a farce, with many of the invited members having been accused of war crimes. 

Among the world leaders invited are Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who each have arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the former for Israel’s brutal massacre in Gaza and the latter for crimes committed during the ongoing Ukraine war. 

Also invited is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, who is accused of various human rights violations, including abuses against the country’s Uighur and Tibetan populations. Trump personally confirmed Putin’s invitation to reporters Monday night, and scoffed at news that France’s Emmanuel Macron will not join the board. 

“Well, nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon, so you know, that’s alright,” Trump said. “I’ll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join.”

The whole board seems to be a joke designed to weaken the United Nations and fatten Trump’s wallet, with every member required to pay a $1 billion fee. (It’s unclear where this money will be held.) Some countries with far-right leaders, such as Argentina and Hungary, have already accepted Trump’s invitation, but other U.S. allies have been hesitant, wondering what the point is and how the body would actually resolve international conflicts.  

President Trump issued a flimsy, ill-defined proclamation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at 8:15 p.m., after hours of silence—and criticism from the NAACP.

“Dr. King pioneered a movement that would go on to triumphantly reaffirm our national conviction that every man, woman, and child is endowed by their Creator with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the statement read. “As President, I am steadfastly committed to ensuring that our country will always be guided by the same principles that Dr. King defended throughout his life and to upholding the timeless truth that our rights are not granted by government but endowed by Almighty God.” 

Trump went on to note that he had “proudly ordered the declassification of documents related to [King’s] assassination,” even as the family actively disapproved of how he went about releasing them at the time.  

Notably, the statement made no mention of racial justice or African Americans.

NAACP National President Derrick Johnson was unconvinced by the president’s proclamation, stating that “Donald Trump has zero interest in uniting this country or recognizing its history and diversity.”

“Instead, he wants to pit us against each other so that we don’t pay attention to the fact that his net worth has more than doubled while families lose their health care and access to essential services,” Johnson continued. 

Trump’s purposefully unspecific proclamation is yet another example of American politicians whitewashing, sanitizing, or outright denigrating the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a man who was surveilled, slandered, and eventually killed for organizing against violent racial discrimination and economic inequality of African Americans.

“We renew our resolve to honor our heritage, reclaim our freedom, and recommit to the truth that America is, was, and forever will be a great Nation,” Trump wrote near the end of his proclamation, using verbiage that had nothing to do with MLK Day. “On this day, I encourage all Americans to recommit themselves to Dr. King’s dream by engaging in acts of service to others, to their community, and to our Nation.”

The president appears ready and willing to turn on some of America’s greatest allies in his quest to conquer Greenland.

In a frenetic string of posts to Truth Social late Sunday night, Donald Trump skewered Britain and France, and released private messages sent to him by French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Trump claimed that Britain was acting with “GREAT STUPIDITY” in its Chagos Islands deal, which would return the islands—a vestige of the empire’s colonies—to Mauritius. Despite previously supporting the exchange, Trump suddenly claimed that handing over the island of Diego Garcia, which hosts a U.S. military base, would appear weak to global forces such as China and Russia, and add to a “very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”

In another needless dig at America’s strategic partners, Trump also put Macron and Rutte on blast, publishing screenshots of private messages the European leaders sent to him in an attempt to redirect his energies away from annexing Greenland.

“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” Macron wrote, according to Trump’s posts. “Let us try to build great things.”

That was, apparently, insulting enough to Trump to warrant a public callout that effectively calls into question the security of any exchange with the current U.S. leader.

Continuing his breathless digital rant, Trump shared a picture of himself in the Oval Office beside a poster board of the Western hemisphere—in which the U.S., Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela were colored in with the American flag. In another post, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself planting a U.S. flag in rocky terrain next to a sign reading “Greenland: U.S. Territory, Est. 2026.”

Meanwhile, while speaking with reporters earlier the same night, Trump opened his arms to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whom he invited to join his “Board of Peace,” an idea he floated in September as part of a 20-point peace plan to control Gaza.

“Yeah, he’s been invited,” Trump said.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have just made up the craziest excuse for terrorizing a U.S. citizen with no criminal record.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were caught on camera Sunday dragging a elderly grandfather out into the snowy streets of St. Paul, Minnesota, wearing nothing but his basketball shorts, a blanket draped over his shoulders—and a pair of handcuffs.

DHS released a statement Monday claiming that ICE had been conducting a “targeted operation” to detain two convicted sex offenders. “The US citizen lives with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation. The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d. He matched the description of the targets,” the statement said.

But the family of ChongLy “Scott” Thao told a very different story, according to journalist Marisa Kabas.

“[Thao] does not live with, nor has he ever lived with, the individuals DHS claims were targets of this operation. The only people residing at the home are Mr. Thao, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson,” the family said in a statement. “They do not know the individuals DHS references.

“ICE agents did not present a warrant, did not ask for identification, and nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn,” the statement said. “Mr. Thao went willingly with ICE, despite knowing he had done nothing wrong.”

One family member, Louansee Moua, wrote in a post on Facebook Sunday that agents pointed a gun at Thao’s daughter-in-law’s head during the chaotic arrest. Thao was driven around, questioned, and fingerprinted before being returned home.

The family’s statement said that dragging Thao half-naked into 12-degree weather was “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing.”

This incident comes just days after one St. Paul resident warned neighbors that ICE agents had begun asking people to identify where Hmong and other Asian families live, as Donald Trump’s door-to-door immigration enforcement campaign continues to terrorize the Twin Cities.

Virginia’s Democratic-controlled legislature just got one step closer to victory in the battle against Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme.

The commonwealth’s Senate passed an amendment Friday that would allow the state to redraw its congressional map before the upcoming midterm elections, potentially netting Democrats, who already control six of the state’s 11 districts, an additional three or four seats.

The measure, which will amend Virginia’s Constitution to allow lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map if another state does the same outside of the typical decennial cycle, can now be slated to appear on a special election ballot sometime before April 16. If voters pass the amendment, that gives Democrats a major step up come November.

Earlier this month, Trump told Republican lawmakers that he needed the party to maintain control of the House and Senate in order to avoid being impeached.

Unfortunately for him, this seems increasingly unavoidable, as in a typical midterm cycle, the presidential party pretty consistently loses ground. Those basic odds, coupled with Trump’s dismal approval rating and Democratic candidates’ growing momentum is a particularly bad sign for the president, who has started babbling about potentially cancelling the midterm elections altogether.

So far, five red states have redrawn their congressional maps at the behest of Trump in order to hand a potential nine seats to the Republican Party: Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. California also revamped its district lines to hand five seats back to the Democrats.

A Reagan-appointed federal judge says the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian activists is an “unconstitutional conspiracy.”

U.S. District Judge William Young, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, criticized Trump’s draconian crackdown on people like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, whose only crimes were being vocal supporters of Palestine, while announcing his plans to issue an order to prevent those kinds of targeted deportations from happening again.

“I find it breathtaking that I have been compelled on the evidence to find the conduct of such high-level officers of our government—Cabinet secretaries—conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,” Young said, alluding to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “These Cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Young even compared the administration’s larger deportation policy to people catching and returning enslaved African Americans under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

“I’ve asked myself why—how did this happen? How could our own government, the highest officials in our government, seek to infringe the rights of people lawfully here in the United States? And I’ve come to believe that there’s a concept of freedom here that I don’t understand,” he said at the same hearing. “The record in this case convinces me that these high officials, and I include the president of the United States, have a fearful view of freedom.”

Young plans on releasing a formal ruling sometime next week.

“We cast around the word ‘authoritarian,’” he said. “I don’t, in this context, treat that in a pejorative sense, and I use it carefully, but it’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely.”

A majority of Americans said that President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was a failure, according to a humiliating CNN poll published Friday. No kidding.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans called Trump’s first year a failure, according to the poll, which showed Americans had found a new floor for the president’s dismal economic performance.

One year of Trump’s so-called “Golden Era” for America has landed him the worst approval rating on the economy in his entire presidential career. Just 39 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 61 percent disapproved, landing him a net rating of -21 in the latest poll. In Trump’s first term, his worst net rating was -5 in 2017, with a 44–49 split.

A 55 percent majority said that Trump had worsened economic conditions, while just 32 percent said they’ve improved. And a whopping 64 percent of respondents said that Trump hadn’t done enough to lower the price of groceries. (Despite Trump’s lifeless promises to lower the price of groceries, healthy whole foods still remain out of reach for average Americans.)

The new year has only brought about more pessimism regarding the economy. Just over 4 in 10 respondents said that they expect the economy to improve a year from now, down from 56 percent from last January.

As economic anxieties have blossomed, more and more people have begun to believe that Trump has lost touch with the average American. Only thirty-six percent of respondents said he has the right priorities, down from 45 percent at the beginning of his term. And in a new all-time low for Trump, only one-third of respondents said they believed the president actually cared about them, down from 40 percent last March.

Again, is anyone actually surprised? As the president throws lavish parties, Americans struggle against the weakening job market, soaring prices, and steadily increasing inflation—and our cities fall into chaos at the hands of masked federal agents. But no, the president should really have a new ballroom.

Looking back on the many promises he made during his inaugural address, most respondents felt that he’d not made any progress toward actually achieving them.

Notably, the promise that the most respondents thought Trump had made progress on was “restoring safety to the United States.” But only 35 percent felt that way, while 38 percent thought he’d made things worse. And that was his best result. Thirty-five percent.

Meanwhile, the promise the most respondents felt he’d failed at was “being a peacemaker and unifier.” Just 25 percent of respondents said they felt he’d made progress on being a peacemaker, while 47 percent said he’d made things worse. This comes after Trump has launched a campaign of extrajudicial military strikes on boats the government claims—but won’t prove—are smuggling drugs, threatened multiple countries with military intervention (including our own allies), and weakened diplomatic ties with his ridiculous approach to foreign policy.