ICE Locked People in Cages the Size of Phone Booths

Staff at Alligator Alcatraz called them “calming areas.” They were really cages.

A new report Monday revealed that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General discovered two metal cages, roughly the size of a phone booth, where immigrant detainees were kept at Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump administration’s soft-sided concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.

Between the camp’s hasty construction in July 2025 and its official closure in January 2026, at least 79 detainees were held in these small outdoor cages, according to the report. Immigrant detainees would spend between seven minutes and two hours in the enclosures, each four feet three inches wide and seven feet nine inches tall.

Staff claimed that detainees would request time in these so-called “calming areas,” and that they were never even locked. Both cages, however, included locking mechanisms.

The OIG found one instance in which a “calming area” may have been used as a disciplinary tool. Documentation provided to the OIG noted that one detainee who spent 26 minutes in a small metal enclosure had “failed to comply with a lawful command.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that the cages were used for “disciplinary issues, crisis intervention, housing changes, and conflicts among detainees,” according to the report.

In March, Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Dick Durbin wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and then–ICE Director Todd Lyons over concerns that immigrants were being kept in a small structure called “the box,” where they were “held in stress positions with hands and feet tightly shackled for hours at a time, in direct sunlight with no access to food or water.”

The OIG could not confirm these claims, but stated that the use of these cages was “highly unconventional” and did not align with the standards for humane treatment.

“Use of these small metal enclosures for any reason is unprecedented among ICE facilities inspected by OIG,” the report stated. “Confining individuals in small metal enclosures for any reason presents significant risks to detainee health and well-being.”

Alligator Alcatraz has been the source of dozens of disturbing reports of inhumane treatment. Detainees at the soft-sided facility reported flooding in the tents, worm-infested food, behemoth bugs, no access to running water, and widespread violations of immigrants’ legal rights.

A former corrections officer at Alligator Alcatraz previously claimed that detainees were being kept in a “human-sized kennel.” One detainee told CBS News: “We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment.”

A coalition of NFL owners have deemed Macklemore unfit to perform in their stadiums.

The “Thrift Shop” rapper was slated to perform during 10 stops of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour. That plan was unexpectedly canned Monday, when Sheeran’s representatives announced that the tour would go on without Macklemore after several stadiums across the country banned him from performing.

“As the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,” Messina Touring Group, the promoter of Sheeran’s U.S. tour, told Rolling Stone. “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”

Macklemore was more explicit in a post on his Instagram account, claiming that he was booted from the tour after billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft deemed the musician’s brief pro-Palestine speech at New Jersey’s Metlife Stadium too risqué.

“Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding P!nk and what I said at Metlife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him,” Macklemore wrote.

Kraft owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where Macklemore and Sheeran were scheduled to perform on September 25.

“Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium,” Macklemore continued. “Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”

Macklemore said he had a tough conversation with Sheeran, during which Sheeran insisted on maintaining his apolitical image.

“Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships, and access. I’ve lost all those things,” Macklemore continued. “But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed.”

Besides Metlife and Gillette Stadiums, Macklemore was scheduled to play alongside Sheeran at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta,; AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida; Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida; Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California; SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles; and Lumen Field in Seattle. Nearly all of the stadiums are owned by NFL-affiliated groups or maintain enormous contracts with the football league.

“What I said at Metlife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years,” Macklemore continued. “So why is it an issue now? Because I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, ‘Free Palestine’ becomes too much of a risk.”

No other artist in recent memory has kicked up such a firestorm from the NFL’s powerful billionaire owners. Earlier this year, Ye—better known by his former name, Kanye West—performed at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and Raymond James Stadium without issue, despite his affinities for Adolf Hitler, the Nazi regime, and his long history of antisemitic remarks.

Chris Brown too has been performing in the same stadiums across the country, despite the fact that he has been accused—and found guilty of—brutalizing multiple people, including his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. Representative Jasmine Crockett even honored Brown onstage during his performance Saturday at AT&T Stadium.

Pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil is suing his alma mater, Columbia University, for failing to protect him and other students from harassment over their activism against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Khalil and other former Columbia students filed a lawsuit against the university in federal court Monday, alleging that Columbia’s administrators ignored their pleas for help against repeated threats as part of a pattern of “deliberate indifference” even before the attacks of October 7, 2023, The New York Times reports.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil in March 2025 at his university apartment building despite the fact that he was a legal permanent resident and had not committed any crimes. He was detained for 104 days and missed the birth of his first child.

“I’m not suing Columbia for what ICE did,” Khalil told the Times. “I’m suing Columbia for creating the conditions for ICE to do what it did.”

The lawsuit says that Columbia didn’t do anything about the harassment faced by members of the SIPA Palestine Working Group, which Khalil led while studying at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. The group, formed in 2018 to “encourage a more holistic understanding of Palestine,” hosted discussions and lectures and also sponsored annual study trips to the Palestinian territories.

Allegedly, the lawsuit states, the university did little, if anything at all, to stop Islamophobic or anti-Palestinian rhetoric against the group’s members, and didn’t act when the group’s event flyers were torn down. After October 7, 2023, a pro-Israel organization, Accuracy in Media, acquired photographs and the names of the group’s leaders, which are only accessible to people with Columbia University passwords, and doxxed the students. Their names and faces were plastered on a truck circling campus with the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”

“It felt like they didn’t bother to look or do the bare minimum,” Bhavana Bellamkonda, one of the other students suing the university, said to the Times.

The latest lawsuit comes after Khalil used the KKK Act of 1871 to sue the Trump administration in July, alleging that the White House conspired with right-wing Zionist organizations to intimidate, arrest, and deport pro-Palestine activists including himself. Since then, however, the Trump administration has redoubled its efforts to deport Khalil and other foreign students who disagree with the U.S. government’s stance on Israel and Palestine.

This story has been updated.

Attorney General Todd Blanche invoked the Alien Terrorist Removal Act for the first time ever to expel Nazira Haji Zada, a lawful permanent resident from Afghanistan, from the country for allegedly being the “matriarch” who helped radicalize her Islamic extremist family members.

According to court filings unsealed Friday, Haji Zada waived her rights to challenge her detention and was deported back to Afghanistan last month.

“Nazira Haji Zada, 47, an Afghan national previously residing in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed from the U.S. after conceding that she is an alien terrorist. As the matriarch in her family, she supported a plot to commit an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024 for which her son and son-in-law were previously arrested and convicted,” the Justice Department announced.

Haji Zada became a permanent resident in 2018, as her husband worked as an assistant to the U.S. military on Bagram Air Base, one of the largest U.S. bases in Afghanistan. Her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, pleaded guilty to attempting to purchase two AK-47-style rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition from an undercover FBI agent in order to carry out a terrorist attack in Oklahoma in 2024. Abdullah was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Tawhedi is still awaiting sentencing.

Investigators noted that Haji Zada, however, had no knowledge of their plans.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court, created after the 1996 Oklahoma City Bombing, allowed to DOJ to circumvent charging suspected terrorists in criminal court and instead allows them to be removed from the country over “terrorist activity.”

“Under the law, terrorist activity includes not only serious offenses … but also providing, whether voluntarily or under duress, housing or transportation to what the law defines as a ‘terrorist organization.’ Statutorily, the term terrorist organization includes even ‘a group of two or more individuals, whether organized or not,’ who have hijacked a vehicle or used a firearm to cause substantial damage to property—a threshold virtually any criminal gang would meet,” the Brennan Center for Justice notes. “As the courts have acknowledged, these terms encompass ‘more conduct than our society, and perhaps even Congress, has come to associate with traditional acts of terrorism.’”

It is also much easier for the government to secure approval for an individual’s removal, as it only has to prove a “preponderance of evidence” rather than the traditional, more strenuous “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The DOJ also reportedly refused to show classified evidence to Haji Zada’s attorneys, even though they had a security clearance.

“Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that will be used against them is a plain violation of due process,” Haji Zada’s public defenders said, adding that they expect the decision to be rejected as “unconstitutional.”

Two U.S. citizen teenagers who were on their way to file enlistment papers to join the Marines were violently attacked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who reportedly detained them for nearly eight hours before letting them go. 

Telemundo reports that agents pepper-sprayed the teenagers because they were allegedly filming ICE arresting parents outside of Santos Livas Elementary School in Alamo, Texas. ICE agents were caught on video pulling one teen from the car and punching him repeatedly in the face while he lay on the ground. The other teen, Luis Ochoa, said he informed the ICE agents he was a citizen but was told, “I don’t give a damn.… Your parents can’t help you now.”  

Ochoa is reportedly rethinking his decision to enlist, with his mother telling Telemundo, “How are they supposed to serve a country that doesn’t even uphold their basic rights?” 

The Trump administration is already making it clear it has no interest in upholding those rights. Military service has no effect on this regime’s mass deportation agenda, with agents freely targeting the family members of service members and recruits without any fear of reproach. The two teens didn’t even experience the worst of ICE. ICE agents routinely attack people in public, shooting and killing targets as well as bystanders regardless of legal status. Sometimes people have been held in ICE custody for months. Still, the agency has received record amounts of funding with virtually no accountability.