ICE to Invade Ohio Right After Trump Strips Immigrants of Legal Status

Local officials in Springfield, Ohio—the subject of Vice President JD Vance’s racist smears about Haitian immigrants—are bracing for a 30-day ICE surge. 

In a message obtained by the Springfield News-Sun, Springfield City School District Superintendent Bob Hill said that local officials had discussed the likelihood that federal immigration authorities could descend on the city sometime after Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants expires on February 3.

“Federal authorities signaled an enforcement window of at least 30 days,” Hill’s message said. “A federal list of individual removal orders has been identified in Springfield as an initial focal point for enforcement activity, with discretion to detain additional individuals encountered who lack lawful status.”

Hill specified that there was no evidence that immigration enforcement would take place on school property. However, as we have seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere, immigration enforcement directly affects school-age children, who can either be left stranded or detained alongside their relatives. 

In a city such as Springfield, which has seen an influx of new Haitian residents in the past few years, this is especially true. Pam Shay, director of federal programs at Springfield City Schools, claimed that immigrant students count for anywhere between 5 and 40 percent of the population of an individual district building. She also said that approximately 20 percent of the district’s 1,400 students were admitted after 2021, and do not have citizenship documents. 

The meeting of state leaders and emergency management officials that prompted Hill’s message was reportedly hosted by Governor Bob DeWine. However, the governor’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said there had been no “formal communication” of ICE’s plans for the city, and he could not verify whether the governor had warned administrators about the enforcement window or the list. 

Once TPS expires, many Haitian immigrants will be stripped of their legal status, unless they sought alternative protections, such as asylum. However, there have been numerous reports that immigration judges are routinely dismissing asylum cases and the asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal. 

Advocates in Springfield who warned about the impending immigration enforcement when TPS expires were instructed by government officials to help Haitian immigrants “self-deport” to a “third country.”  

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vance elevated racist lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, using incendiary rhetoric to drum up votes. President Donald Trump then echoed these lies during a presidential debate, and vowed to enact aggressive immigration enforcement in Springfield. Trump had initially attempted to end TPS in September, but a federal judge extended the deadline until February.

The blowback is not slowing down for Representative Tom Suozzi, in the wake of his vote to continue funding ICE.

Several strategically placed activists appeared at an event in Suozzi’s district Tuesday night, wielding a diaper, kneepads, and some harsh words for the Long Island Democrat.

“I wanted to get something for you: This is an adult diaper for when you pee yourself in front of Donald Trump,” said a man associated with the group Climate Defiance as he approached the dais. “You can wear this, it’s really nice. You’re the type of leader we need right now, someone who soils himself when the fascists are at our door.”

As the man was escorted away, another member popped up out of the audience.

“Sorry, I didn’t know we were doing gifts,” the second activist said. “I have some kneepads for you, you can use these while you blow Donald Trump. Alternatively you can get off your knees and you can stand up to him literally and figuratively. Abolish ICE, defund them. You do not show any moral courage. You are funding the gestapo.”

As that activist was shuffled away, yet another voice rose up, walking across the stage with a microphone before he was ultimately dragged out of the room by a small crowd.

“I just would like to say one thing,” the third man said. “As a Jewish man, I have never felt safer than when there is a mass gestapo in the street. So, thank you Congressman Tom Suozzi for funding ICE.

“I think the only way we can fight antisemitism is to align ourselves with white supremacists,” he snarked. “I know he apologized, but I just want to reiterate that nobody could have predicted that ICE would have been killing innocent people.”

Suozzi was one of seven liberal lawmakers who voted in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s $64.4 billion funding bill last week. At the time, Suozzi argued that the bill—and by extension, his vote—was not intended to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not even 48 hours later, ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, renewing a public fury that ultimately forced Suozzi to publicly defend his decision.

In an email to his campaign list Monday, Suozzi said that he had underestimated the significance of his vote, claiming he did not realize that the funding vote would be interpreted as a “referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

“I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that,” Suozzi wrote. “I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.”

A group of local, elected prosecutors from around the country is launching an effort to hold federal agents liable for abuses of power. They’re calling it the Fight Against Federal Overeach, or “FAFO” for short. The name FAFO turns “fuck around and find out,” a term Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make happen at his emergency military summit last fall, against the Trump administration.

A press release on Wednesday noted that the group would be particularly focused on states undergoing an influx of federal agents.

“The coalition launches amid growing concerns about warrantless entries, unlawful detentions, and coercive enforcement tactics by federal agents, and it’s intended to ensure that constitutional limits on federal power are actively enforced through lawful institutions,” the statement read. “The coalition will share strategies and best practices among prosecutors, provide regular public updates on efforts to rein in unlawful federal conduct and educate the public on what paths are legally available, and coordinate on accountability efforts across jurisdictions.”

FAFO’s founding members are a group of district attorneys including Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, Austin, Texas’s José Garza, and Pima County, Arizona’s Laura Conover, among others.

The launch comes as federal immigration agents in the past year have descended upon Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Los Angeles; and Minneapolis, where Minnesotans watched agents gun down two of their neighbors—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—in broad daylight. Aside from the killing, these deployments have been marked by door-to-door raids, detained toddlers, and maimed protesters. While it’s unclear how likely FAFO is to succeed in charging a federal agent with abuse of power, this one of the most pointed statements from local, legal leadership to date.

“No agency and no officer is above the law,” Krasner said in the statement. “When federal agents exceed their lawful authority, local prosecutors have both the power and the duty to act. The project exists to ensure that accountability is real, coordinated, and enforced through lawful institutions.”

The FAFO coalition will convene in February to discuss tactics and next steps.

Rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen released a protest song Wednesday condemning the violence occurring at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in Minneapolis.

The song, titled “Streets of Minneapolis,” denounces “Trump’s federal thugs,” the administration’s attempts to cover up the killings and raids they’ve conducted, and ICE’s ongoing presence in the city.

“I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” Springsteen said in a statement posted to Instagram. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free.”

The song also took aim at active participants within the Trump administration, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, who have unsuccessfully tried to smear Pretti’s and Good’s name in the aftermath of their deaths in order to salvage Trump’s immigration agenda.

“Their claim was self defense, sir / Just don’t believe your eyes / It’s our blood and bones / And these whistles and phones / Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies,” Springsteen sings on the new track.

Springsteen has been a vocal critic of the president for years. Since Trump’s second inauguration, the “Born in the USA” singer has accused the president and his allies of “rolling back historic civil rights legislation,” abandoning longtime U.S. allies to side with dictators, “defunding American universities,” and “taking sadistic pleasure” in inflicting pain on “loyal American workers.”

Before ICE agents killed Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked in Veterans Affairs, Springsteen appeared at the Light of Day benefit in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a similar fury.

“If you believe in the power of law and that no one stands above it,” Springsteen said on January 17, “if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president, as the mayor of the city said: ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

This story has been updated.

The Department of Homeland appears to have found a new scapegoat on behalf of federal agents who brutally killed a U.S. citizen in broad daylight: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has reportedly started blaming Miller for her decision to label Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend, as a “domestic terrorist.”

Although Noem’s Cabinet position means she outranks Miller, the ghoulish presidential adviser is an architect of the Trump administration’s lethal immigration policy, and his power extends over DHS functions.

In a meeting with Donald Trump Monday—which notably excluded Miller—Noem made sure to emphasize that in the aftermath of the shooting, she’d been taking her directions from Miller and the president, a source told Axios.

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios.

Some in the White House are blaming Customs and Border Protection for furnishing Trump administration officials with an incident report offering scant details, leading them to believe Pretti had “brandished” a weapon. Once Miller heard that a gun had been involved, he immediately started to formulate a narrative in which Pretti intended to massacre federal agents, one source told Axios.

Minutes after DHS published a statement Saturday claiming Pretti was an “armed suspect” who “violently resisted” federal officers’ attempts to disarm him, Miller posted the baseless claim that Pretti was a “would-be assassin” who’d attempted to murder federal law enforcement officers. Noem then repeated this language in her press conference later that day.

Footage of the arrest indicated that federal agents were not aware that Pretti was armed when they started beating him and that Pretti was already disarmed with his arms pinned above his head when he was shot at least 10 times.

It seems that Miller may be hoping to backtrack on his callous lies, and he has suddenly changed his story on Alex Pretti’s killing after Trump’s inner circle began to turn on him.

The MAGA movement—and even some sitting Republican congressmen—are blaming progressive Somali Representative Ilhan Omar for the spray attack she experienced at a town hall on Tuesday night.

Representative Randy Fine clearly stated it was Omar’s fault, even when prodded to say otherwise.

“Obviously we often disagree with her politics, but this is not acceptable at any level,” a NewsMax host said while asking for Fine’s reaction, expressing a basic level of empathy that MAGA seems unable to access.

“Look, I want Ilhan Omar to be deported and denaturalized, but I don’t want her to be attacked or hurt,” Fine said, mispronouncing her first name as “Elon.” “But I also blame Ilhan Omar for what happened.”

GOP Representative Ron Johnson went on a nonsensical rant about what would happen if the attacker was an undocumented immigrant (he wasn’t).

“Let’s talk about how crazy this is. Had that been a Republican member of Congress, had that been an illegal immigrant spraying something at a Republican member of Congress—in Minneapolis what would probably happen is they would release that illegal immigrant, and then frustrate ICE’s attempt to apprehend and deport that individual,” Johnson said, rambling on about some hypothetical scenario rather than acknowledging that his colleague was doing the same job he’s supposed to do: talking to constituents.

“We want criminals off the street. We want people that are criminals who came to this country illegally, we want them out of the country. Democrats … created this mess. Now they’re doing everything they can to frustrate DHS, ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, in their effort to clean up the Democrat-created mess,” he continued.

These claims are based entirely on speculation and preexisting racist hatred for Omar fomented by Trump, who on Tuesday evening suggested that Omar “probably had herself sprayed.” MAGA quickly followed suit.

“Nobody cares about your staged victim propaganda. Please go back to Somalia,” MAGA sycophant Laura Loomer wrote, in response to Omar announcing that she was OK after the attack. “We are getting really tired of people like you taking up space in our country.”

All of these comments come after President Trump himself gave them their messaging, claiming that Omar sprayed herself without even watching the video.

“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” the president told ABC’s Rachel Scott on Tuesday. “I haven’t seen [the video]. No, no. I hope I don’t have to bother.”

The FBI is carrying out a search warrant at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, related to the 2020 election.

The search is taking place at the Fulton County Elections Hub & Operations Center, the FBI said Wednesday. A spokesperson in the Atlanta office said the bureau was conducting “court-ordered activity” at the election office, without providing additional details.

The building has served as storage space for election equipment, as well as office space for multiple Fulton County agencies, since it opened in 2023. Atlanta TV station WSB-TV reports that the FBI is seeking to take custody of Fulton County election ballots from the 2020 election.

The Justice Department sued the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections last month, claiming that the office hadn’t complied with a subpoena demanding “used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”

Trump and his supporters continue to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen from him, alleging widespread fraud in places like Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pursued a criminal investigation against Trump and 18 allies over the attempt to overthrow election results in her state, but she was disqualified from the case in 2024 over conflict of interest concerns, and the case was dismissed last year.

This story has been updated.

Nicki Minaj, the once-iconic rapper turned MAGA pawn, went onstage at President Trump’s “Trump Accounts” event on Wednesday to deliver a message that was as brief as it was bizarre.

“I’d like to ask you to come up, Nicki, come on up.… She’s been such a great supporter, and a great supporter of Trump Accounts,” the president proclaimed. “And I said, ‘I’m gonna let my nails grow, because I love those nails. I’m gonna let those nails grow.’ She’s so good. She’s been MAGA, what can I say?”

Minaj eventually made it onstage, wearing a large white fur coat.

“Hello! I don’t know what to say, but I will say that I am probably the president’s number one fan,” said Minaj, with Trump and Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary flanking her as the microphone blocked most of her face. “And that’s not going to change. And the hate, or what people have to say—it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more, and it’s gonna motivate all of us to support him more.

“We’re not gonna let them get away with bullying him, and the smear campaigns, it’s not going to work, OK?” she continued. “He has a lot of force behind him, and God is protecting him. Amen?” She then left the stage, as Trump invited more and more people onstage to speak in awkward, 30-second intervals.

Minaj was allegedly supposed to be there to announce a massive investment into the so-called “Trump Accounts,” a sort of warped trust-fund situation in which kids born in zip codes under the median-income threshold between 2025 and 2028 get a $1,000 federal contribution that tracks to the U.S. stock index and will become available when they turn 18. But Minaj made no mention of it.

This is at least the third public appearance Minaj has made in support of the Trump administration and the larger MAGA movement. Last November, she joined Ambassador Mike Waltz to spread misinformed claims of “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. In December, she joined Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, at the Turning Point USA Conference, stating they were all “the cool kids.” And now there’s this weird little moment.

Donald Trump’s state of mind left the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, very concerned after they met earlier this month.

Fico told European Union leaders at a summit last week that he was worried about Trump’s “psychological state,” saying that the president came across as “dangerous” during a meeting the pair had on January 17 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Fico made the comments last Thursday at an emergency EU summit over Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.

Diplomats present at the meeting confirmed Fico’s comments to Politico, but said they didn’t know what Trump said that alarmed Fico. The Slovakian leader is a staunch supporter of Trump, praising him for his stances on the Russia-Ukraine war and telling Americans at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year that “your president is doing Europe a great service.”

Fico denied Politico’s report in an X post Wednesday morning, saying that “no one heard anything, no one saw anything, there are no witnesses, but nothing prevented the POLITICO portal from coming up with lies.” The White House has also denied the report, calling it “absolutely total fake news.”

But the report, which Politico confirmed with diplomats from four different EU countries as well as a senior EU official, is corroborated by multiple instances of Trump’s cognitive decline. He forgot the word for Alzheimer’s in a recent interview while explaining his family history with the disease. Trump mixed up Iceland and Greenland in his Davos speech last week, and one of his former lawyers, Ty Cobb, thinks that his “dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.” It’s obvious that the president is getting worse every day.

Longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell has revealed that more than two dozen men received cushy plea deals with the government.

In a habeas petition filed Tuesday aimed at preemptively ending her prison sentence, Maxwell alleged that 29 friends of the notorious sex trafficker had been “protected” by the Justice Department by way of “secret settlements.”

Those settlements went to “25 men” and four potential “co-conspirators,” reported The Daily Beast. The petition has prompted questions regarding the identities of the cloaked individuals—and why the DOJ would offer them protection.

Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 19 to force the executive branch to release the files in their entirety. The bill stipulated that the Justice Department had 30 days to comply, but that deadline has since disappeared in the rearview. It is now late January, and less than one percent of the files has been made publicly available.

In a Tuesday court filing, the DOJ offered vague placations that it expects to process the trove, which includes two million documents, “in the near term.” Officials did not provide a specific date for the full release, as required by law.

Employees at the Justice Department are reportedly manually reviewing the pages to find and redact the names of victims and, presumably, censor mentions of protected individuals.

So far, the DOJ has released roughly 12,285 documents related to the Epstein files, totalling 125,575 pages.

Earlier this month, Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie called for a special master or independent counsel to hold the DOJ to a timeline as it drags its feet on the cache.

“The Department of Justice is openly defying the law by refusing to release the full Epstein files,” Khanna said in a statement. “Millions of files are being kept from the public.”

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now, though the White House has not indicated it will grant one.

A July interview between Maxwell and the DOJ proved incredibly fruitful for the convict, however, sparking concerns that the Trump administration had offered Maxwell a quid pro quo in exchange for a revised “Epstein list.”

Shortly after she spoke with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—received an extremely cushy transfer, shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas where she has been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates. Her time behind bars has since included meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.