A Disappearing Act

Manufacturing Broken Lives

The United States government, at the express direction of Donald Trump, are in the process of arresting, detaining, interrogating, and in some cases near-torturing legal residents, including "Green Card" holders (permanent legal residents) and people married to US citizens. Green Card holders have many of the same legal protections as US citizens, including the right to free expression.

The news has been chaotic surrounding these arrests, made more opaque by the proximity to other seismic stories such as the mass firings and re-hirings of Federal employees, further mass deportation efforts, a tanking economy, ever-changing tariffs, and more. So I set out to make an index of who we know ICE has "disappeared" so far.

I was naive. I just kept finding more names and stories.

Mahmoud Khalil

You've likely heard of this case already. Mahmoud Khalil is a graduate student at Columbia University. He is a legal permanent resident holding a green card, and is married to a US Citizen (who is also 8 months pregnant).

Khalil was involved in anti-Israel protests at Columbia, which is right at the intersection of two major Trump admin targets: anti-Israel sentiment and higher education. Throw on the fact that it's Obama's alma mater, and its a perfect storm for Trump to target.

Plain-clothed ICE agents showed up in an unmarked car, did not identify themselves, and arrested Mahmoud Khalil, dragging him off from his pregnant wife. He complied and remained calm throughout the arrest, and has not been charged with a crime.

The Trump administration has made it clear that this arrest has nothing to do with a crime, but instead is about them trying to label him a "terrorist" and "Hamas supporter" for protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio technically has the ability to arbitrarily label someone a national security risk, giving him the legal footing to deport whoever he disagrees with.

Khalil was arrested March 8th, and remains in ICE custody today, having been carted Columbia University in New York down to a detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from his family. He remains a purely political prisoner of the United States government with his right to due process ignored while the administration finds the right loopholes. A judge has blocked plans to deport him, but the legal hold of that order is shaky at best.

Fabian Schmidt

Fabian Schmidt was arrested by ICE upon returning to the United States from a trip abroad. Schmidt is another legal permanent resident originally from Germany, with a green card and married to a US citizen.

His wife went to the airport to pick him up, only to wait four hours and hear nothing. Schmidt's family eventually learned that he was detained and brutally interrogated, including bring stripped and forced into a cold shower, and being pressured to give up his green card.

According to his family, he was also denied food, water, sleep, and medication. They learned of his condition after he was checked in to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he stayed momentarily and was diagnosed with influenza. He was then transferred back to an ICE detention center in Rhode Island.

Schmidt has not been charged with a crime, and has been a resident of the United States since 2007, getting his green card in 2008. He has no active criminal activity, and has a negligible legal history involving a dismissed charge for possession of cannabis and a DUI which was legally resolved a decade ago.

Schmidt's family is in talks with the German consulate in an attempt to get him out on bail.

More Columbia Students

ICE has continued their activity at Columbia University, targeting more students affiliated with anti-Israel protests.

As a reminder, these protests were multi-cultural and had a large presence of Jewish students protesting Israel as well. Israel is not synonymous with Judaism.

We know of two more students who were targeted. One is a Palestinian woman from the West Bank who ICE arrested on the claim that she has overstayed her visa. Another was a urban planning doctoral student from India on a student visa who ICE claims was "supporting Hamas." The studen has since self-deported.

Even More People

The list continues, including more people who have been detained without cause despite being legal residents and members of United States families.

USA Today compiled a list of legal US residents abducted by agents of the United States government:

• Camila Muñoz, taken upon returning from her honeymoon, marrying a US Citizen (who voted Trump)
• A 50-year old-woman who has spent 30 years in the country and is married to a US citizen
• A 30-year-old woman in a family of US citizens who had proof of her legal residency
• A 30-year-old European woman engaged to a US citizen who overstayed her visa once a decade ago

The list goes on, none of which involve people with a criminal record.

Many of the people who are now in danger of deportation who voted for Trump believed him when he said he would be targeting "illegal criminal aliens," which is genuinely heartbreaking. They heard his words, took them literally, and didn't internalize that he was simply saying "brown people and anyone I don't want to see anymore."

Former US presidents have deported people by the tens of thousands. Obama deported a staggering number of people. I disagree with those actions. I also want to point out a major difference: prior to this administration, deportations were near-exclusively around undocumented residents with a criminal record. We now have the government sending in squads—sometimes in unmarked cars—to abduct dissidents.

I wish I had action items for "what can we do about this?" but the answer unfortunately remains, "care, have cared, and continue to care," which includes consistently being engaged in your community and participating in elections as one of many tools we have to impact the state. A Harris presidency would not have delivered us from evil, but we would have had the breathing room to organize under a Harris presidency, while instead we're scrambling to ask the federal government to let go of abductees who haven't even committed a crime.

Still, know your rights. They may not be respected. Rights are not a magic shield. But they can make an impact, and are not something that should be given up out of apathy or dispair.

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Economy Stuff

Chuck Schumer's Shame Kink

Ten Senate Democrats aligned with Republicans to pass a Trump-backed spending bill to keep the US government open for just a lil' longer. The passing of this bill hands Trump broad latitude to continue doing what he's been doing, and loses the Democrats a major negotiating point.

Chuck Schumer and 9 other Dem Senators voted with Republicans to pass the bill, breaking with their counterparts in the House of Representatives, as well as with the general sentiment of their base. Schumer argued that a shutdown would be too chaotic and give Trump too much power, so instead he voted to give Trump power to continue being chaotic.

Hell, even Nancy Pelosi tried whipping votes in the Senate against Schumer's plan. Long story short, Dems had a moment on their hands where they could have made a statement, but once again chose to do nothing.

Expect several automated fundraising text messages from Dems celebrating the nothing they're doing.

Number Go Down

Stock markets worldwide have been wavering as the US stock market plunges due to… everything above in addition to the whiplash of tariffs and trade wars with our closest allies.

An outlier among the dip is Tesla, whose stock saw a 15% decline in a single day last week, and is about 45% down year-to-date, losing any gains it has made since Elon Musk somehow became in charge of the public sector. A combination of widespread protests and cratering sales especially abroad is causing the price to plummet.

Gaming Stuff

Ready, Fox?

A studio run by the original programmer of Star Fox has announced a spiritual successor to the franchise: Wild Blue.

The original Star Fox games are on-rails arcade-style shooter games with some dogfight moments and a squeaky companion named Slippy. This new entry seems to be capturing a lot of what made the original games great, and since Nintendo decided to just take a big dookie on the franchise, hopefully this will take up the mantle.

"Simply Let Me Continue Profiting Off of Endangering Children!"

Roblox is an incredibly popular online virtual space / game engine / what-have-you with a huge playerbase, especially among young gamers. I mean like, tweens and below. The expansive nature of Roblox and its social-first approach to gameplay means it is an absolute minefield for child abuse, groomers, and all sorts of nastiness.

The CEO of the company behind Roblox has a plan though: "stop bothering me about this."

When asked about the company's plans to tackle the pervasive issues of child exploitation via their platform, he said, "if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox."

A brilliant play from the "profiting off of children" guy.

AI-loy

A leaked video from Sony's "PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group" showed a prototype of an AI-powered character reacting to inputs with speech and facial animation. The demo video was short and has since been removed from YouTube, but showed Horizon franchise main character "Aloy" as driven by an AI.

The team who made the presentation made it clear that it was a demo, but we later learned that the woman who plays Aloy in her games was unaware of the project, though she was assured that they did not use her voice or motion capture recordings to train the AI.

Here's the Weather

More Stuff

• An American AirlinesBoeing 737 jet caught fire on the tarmac after diverting the flight due to "engine noises." Nobody was injured, but we've now got an iconic picture of a bunch of people standing on the wing of a burning airplane that reads, "American" in huge letters
• Completely unrelated, but US airlines are warning about reduced customer demand
• There is a group in Kenya making house construction material out of agricultural waste bonded together with fungal mycelium. Solarpunk vibes.
• Two US federal judges have issued orders requiring the Trump admin to reinstate around 24,000 fired federal employees, citing that they were fired illegally
• Scientists have discovered stone tablets in Iraq which appear to be bureaucratic notes from ancient Mesopotamia

A Note on Even More Stuff

This newsletter focused quite a lot on the stories of the people abducted in some recent ICE raids, but there has been a lot of news in the space of immigration enforcement under the current admin. Things are moving so quickly and chaotically that I chose to focus in on one part of it. At time of writing, we've also seen Trump enact a law from the 1700's which claims we're "at war" with a South American gang, and is using it to deport migrants to a foreign prison known specifically for its brutal conditions. A judge has blocked this, but it happened anyway, so we're in wholly uncharted territory.

I will cover what I can, but will continue focusing on things I can discuss which wont necessarily be changing moment to moment.

Take care. Be well. I'll see you soon.