Mass Deportation

[TimHauck 3,290]

13 minutes ago, SaintsInDome2006 said:

Sounds like a mini-coup against Homan.

Hmm, you may be right 

 

 

[edjr 6,882]

 

[SaintsInDome2006 612]

We checked DHS’s videos of chaos and protests. Here’s what they leave out.

We checked DHS’s videos of chaos and protests. Here’s what they leave out.

 

The Department of Homeland Security posted a swaggering montage to social media in August declaring it had triumphed in its takeover of Washington, D.C. It showed footage of federal agents fighting what a DHS official called a “battle for the soul of our nation” and working “day and night to arrest, detain and deport vicious criminals from our nation’s capital.”

There was one problem. Several of the clips had been recorded during unrelated operations months earlier, in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, Florida. The official’s sound bite about deportations in D.C. played over a clip from May showing detainees on a Coast Guard boat off the coast of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island 400 miles away.

 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security shared a video claiming to show federal agents working to “deport vicious criminals” from Washington, D.C. The video was filmed on Nantucket, the Massachusetts island, in May, according to The Post's reporting. (LEFT: DHS, RIGHT: Jason Graziadei/Nantucket Current)

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have used similarly misleading footage in at least six videos promoting its immigration agenda shared in the last three months, a Washington Post analysis found, muddying the reality of events in viral clips that have been viewed millions of times.

Some videos that purported to show the fiery chaos of Trump-targeted cities included footage from completely different states. One that claimed to show dramatic examples of past administrations’ failures instead featured border crossings and smuggling boats recorded during Trump’s first term.

The Post provided DHS a detailed list of videos featuring misleading footage. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin did not dispute the errors or explain what had happened but said the videos were a small percentage of the more than 400 that the agency has posted this year. “Violence and rioting against law enforcement is unacceptable regardless of where it occurs,” she said.

 

 

The Post sent the same details to the White House. Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman there, did not comment on the errors but said “the Trump administration will continue to highlight the many successes of the president’s agenda through engaging content and banger memes on social media.”

DHS’s video operation now includes in-house photographers and videographers who routinely capture the action of ICE raids and protest responses for videos that administration officials have widely promoted online. In a video DHS posted to X this month, a man in a Border Patrol flak jacket, his camera held aloft, can be seen jogging to catch up with officers putting a detainee into an SUV.

The administration’s intense digital strategy has helped grab Americans’ attention and shape discussion around current events, with some of its videos now capturing bigger audiences on social media than mainstream news reports. A White House video claiming Chicago was “in chaos,” which used footage from other states, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times across Instagram, TikTok and X.

But John Cohen, a former DHS official who worked on federal law enforcement and intelligence issues under both Democratic and Republican administrations, said the mix of misleading and polarizing content could weaken the administration’s ability to build trust with the American public long-term.

During his time in government, Cohen said, law enforcement and security officials worked to ensure that “any message or content we were putting out was absolutely accurate,” fearing misleading information would push people to start tuning them out during national emergencies.

“If people come to believe that what you’re saying is inaccurate or not based on an objective evaluation of a threat or emergency situation, they’re not going to pay attention or listen to you,” said Cohen, who now works at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. “The goal of a law enforcement organization should be to de-escalate. And the way you de-escalate is by providing accurate information.”

‘Soul of our nation’

The misleading example about the “battle for the soul of our nation” was offered in the form of a news-style video featuring DHS deputy assistant secretary Micah Bock. A collection of video clips showcased how the operation had worked to safeguard the “hallowed halls” of Washington, the “heart of our republic,” according to Bock.

But The Post’s analysis, which used reverse-image searches, geolocation tools and other techniques to find the clips’ original sources, found that stretches of the footage had been filmed in different places or times than DHS had presented.

Some footage came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in L.A., according to The Post’s analysis, which matched it to a DHS press release.

Other clips came from an ICE video showing officials conducting “routine daily operations” in February in West Palm Beach. The footage had been uploaded to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, a public repository of military and law enforcement video run by the Defense Department.

A third set of video clips came from federal operations in May on the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, which ICE said led to 40 arrests. The Nantucket Current, a small local news outlet, had published photos and videos onto its websiteand Instagram while reporting on the arrests, during which agents detained undocumented immigrants at traffic stops and loaded them onto a patrol boat for removal.

DHS’s X account reposted the Current’s video that month. So did White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who added, “Bye bye! ”

“The visual of it was really jarring to see,” said Jason Graziadei, the Current’s editor in chief. “Typically when you see ICE arrests, they don’t involve a Coast Guard boat and life jackets.”

‘Antifa terrorists’

The video wasn’t the only DHS release to use a journalist’s footage without credit — or to get its location wrong.

The freelance journalist Ford Fischer was scrolling through X earlier this month when he saw a DHS video overlaid with a message saying “antifa terrorists” had stormed federal facilities in Portland, Oregon. But he recognized the footage because he’d captured it himself days earlier, outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois.

The video, which The Post verified, had been cropped to remove Fischer’s watermark. And it seemed to bolster Trump’s claim that the Oregon city was overwhelmed by violent leftists who were “burning [it] to the ground.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security shared a video claiming to be filmed in Portland, Oregon, that was actually filmed in Broadview, Illinois. (Video: LEFT: DHS, RIGHT: Ford Fischer)

But Fischer had recorded the footage 1,700 miles away, at a prominent protest zone outside Chicago, where federal agents routinely scuffle with protesters seeking to block an ICE facility’s gate.

Fischer said he worried the video’s misleading description could warp Americans’ understanding of how the government was interacting with the public. He also questioned how the mistake was made in the first place: In Broadview, Fischer said, he saw multiple DHS officials gathering video of the scuffles, including one holding a camera-stabilizing tool known as a gimbal commonly used by professional videographers and influencers.

“They seem very media-savvy and very focused on the production of these slick high-end videos,” he said. “But it creates a sense of concern about how the work is being used and how it’s being disconnected from the original source.”

‘Resounding in their thankfulness’

Footage from the Broadview clashes was misused in another DHS video in September seeking to champion federal agents’ move into Memphis. In the video, Bock said the Tennessee city’s communities had been “abandoned to crime and lawlessness” and that residents had been “resounding in their thankfulness” when DHS moved in.

But in the video, Bock spoke over clips showing armed guards outside the ICE facility in Illinois, more than 500 miles away. The video, which was bookended by footage showing Memphis landmarks and its mayor, gave no indication it was recorded in a different state.

‘Decimated our way of life’

Beyond getting its places wrong, the DHS videos have also given incorrect dates.

In a video from this month saying Trump had “secured our nation,” DHS shared clips it said showed how past administrations’ failures had let in criminals who “decimated our way of life.” One showed a middle-of-the-night crossing of the Southern border, while another showed a smuggling boat.

The video did not mention, however, that both scenes had played out in 2019, the third year of Trump’s first term. The border-crossing video was posted to DVIDS and came from a Border Patrol checkpoint in Arizona. The boat clip — which DHS labeled as coming from New York — was taken from a Coast Guard interception in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away, a DVIDS entry shows.

‘Chicago is in chaos’

The White House has made notable errors in its own video operation, posting a video this month that claimed “Chicago is in chaos” and said the city “doesn’t need political spin — it needs HELP.”

The video, however, recycled footage from a months-old ICE operation in Florida, not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. A fact-checker at Agence France-Presse also found other clips in the video had come from operations in Arizona, California, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, some of which had been recorded during President Joe Biden’s time in office.

In a statement to the Daily Beast, which first reported the mismatch, a spokesman for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) made a joke about one of the video’s more notable telltale details. Chicago, he said, isn’t known for its palm trees.

‘I really appreciate you guys’

In one case, ICE posted a photo that many people suspected was false but was mostly accurate.

Earlier this month, ICE’s X account shared a photoof a woman holding a sign outside its facility in Portland that read, “I really appreciate you guys!” Many users argued the image was a fake, saying the strange angles of her arm, the odd contours of the sign and the visual artifacts around the edges of her body suggested the image had been doctored or generated by artificial intelligence.

DHS shared surveillance video of the scene with The Post showing the woman with the sign was real. But an examination of the footage by The Post and independent analysts also found that the photo had been retouched in a way the agency did not disclose. On the sidewalk under the woman’s feet, someone had written, “Chinga la migra” — a Spanish-language curse against the immigration authorities. Most of the message was removed in the image shared by ICE, save for two of the letters visible behind her legs.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shared a photo of a person holding a sign of support in front of a Portland facility. The photo had been edited. (Video: LEFT: ICE, RIGHT: DHS)

The flawed clips show the risks for the administration as it pushes to build support and capture attention through the social media and online-video feeds many Americans now view as their sources for news.

The department has invested in a nationwide social media ad campaign warning undocumented immigrants they should leave the country or be “hunted down.” It also recently bought a $28,000 Skydio X10D drone to add to its aerial recording fleet; ICE this month posted a drone video of protesters clashing with officers onto its Facebook page.

Some of that real-world footage has been used in the department’s trolling memes and dark jokesaround mass deportation. One clip, showing a home’s door being blown off as part of a Chicago ICE operation, was used in a video splicing together detained immigrants with Pokémon soundtracked to the cartoon’s theme song, “Gotta Catch ’Em All.”

The White House explained the administration’s strategy of online irreverence in March by telling The Post it would help “reframe the narrative” around immigration and push back against criticism “in the harshest, most forceful way possible.”

But the pattern of misleading clips in their news-style videos amount to more than just minor editing errors, said Eddie Perez, a former director for civic integrity at Twitter, now called X. Instead, they suggest that the administration has worked to undercut criticism by pumping out videos that could deceive Americans about the scale or success of their policies, transforming government channels into propaganda tools.

“What we are witnessing is the collapse of government accountability through communication based on facts,” he said. “They’re not trying to communicate actions and outcomes. They’re acting like filmmakers, trying to make people laugh, to make them feel scared, to inspire certain emotions regardless of the truth.”

DHS hasn’t let the criticism slow them down. Officials there have continued to frequently post immigration and protest videos in a newscast-like format, often by including an official criticizing the “fake news hoaxes” of media reporting and explaining why viewers should turn to them for the real truth.

“If you lie or smear our brave men and women of @ICEgov law enforcement, you WILL be debunked,” DHS said in an X post on Sunday. “Watch here for the FACTS.”

 

 

[SaintsInDome2006 612]

Zeig mir deine Papiere!! Schnell!!!

[SaintsInDome2006 612]

The DEA said it arrested 171 ‘high ranking’ Sinaloa Cartel members. A Spotlight investigation found that’s not true.

President Trump’s escalating war against Latin American drug cartels crashed into this leafy old mill town with surprising force one morning in late August, when heavily armed federal agents and local police kicked off a series of raids by tossing a flash-bang grenade and bashing in a door.

The special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s New England division, Jarod Forget, said the crackdown “led to 171 cartel member arrests” across the region, including 27 in Franklin. The DEA didn’t name any of the suspects, but Forget described them as “high-level arrests” that were part of a national sweep that netted more than 600 operatives of the feared organization over five days.

“We’re the DEA,” Forget told an interviewer at the time. “We’re not going after low-level retail drug traffickers.” 

Except that isn’t true.

A Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that many of the DEA’s targets in New England were precisely the people Forget said they were not: addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment.

 

Reporters contacted more than 75 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies; sifted through more than 1,650 pages of court records; filed more than four dozen public-records requests; knocked on dozens of doors; and conducted scores of interviews.

The evidence made clear that the government misrepresented the stature of its targets in New England at a time when the Trump administration was seeking to justify deadly strikes on alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea.

“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in state court in Franklin with a felony-level drug sale and immediately released without having to post bail. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.” 

Most of the arrestees the Spotlight Team identified are casualties of the fentanyl crisis, not kingpins making a living off it. They included a man accused of shoplifting chocolate Swiss rolls and Jolly Ranchers from a Hannaford supermarket and a woman who allegedly crashed a car into a column at a local bank and left the scene. 

Some of the 171 arrestees had significant quantities of drugs, but neither court documents nor agency spokespersons provided evidence that they were high-ranking members of the notorious syndicate. Many suspects’ only link to Sinaloa was that they were consumers of drugs the cartel may have helped bring into the country. 

DEA officials last week said they were unable to comment on the Spotlight findings because of the government shutdown. Instead, they flagged eight federal investigations they said were part of the Sinaloa crackdown.

When contacted by the Globe, attorneys for several of those defendants were shocked to learn the DEA was accusing their clients of being members of the Mexican-based cartel, since such allegations have not been raised in court.

“You are the first person to mention this to me,” said lawyer John Benzan, who represents a man accused in early August of helping transport about 140 pounds of cocaine to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico — more than a quarter of the total drugs seized in the Sinaloa raids in New England, according to the DEA.

The majority of the other arrestees the Globe identified either involved minor drug charges or had nothing to do with narcotics at all, leading a former top DEA official to label the Sinaloa operation “political theater.”

“If there had been even a mid-level cartel member arrested, they would have named him. But they didn’t name anybody,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, who worked at the agency for more than three decades. “They just said 600-something arrests, as if it were going to decimate the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel likely doesn’t even know who these people are.”

Three law enforcement officials with knowledge of the New England operation — dubbed “#SinaloaCrackdown2025″ by the DEA on social media — told the Globe that federal drug officials had misrepresented the nature of the sweep. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

“They are doing anything they can to tie it to a cartel,” said one federal law enforcement official, adding that the arrests were “definitely not cartel.”

A Massachusetts law enforcement official briefed by the DEA confirmed that those arrested were nearly all low-level offenders, not major dealers.

“They always talk it up a little,” the official said of the DEA. “They talked this up too much.” 

Law enforcement leaders in several communities told the Globe they were perplexed by some of the government’s claims. For instance, the DEA described Lawrence, Mass., as the regional hub of cartel activity, with Sinaloa members there “communicating directly with high-ranking members of the cartel in other states and in Mexico.” 

“We’re trying to figure out what they’re talking about,” said Lawrence Police Chief Maurice Aguiler, who said he is not aware of any arrests of cartel members. “We just don’t have any information substantiating the inference that Lawrence is an epicenter of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

All of it comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to effectively merge the global war on terror with the decades-old war on drugs.

In February, the State Department designatedSinaloa and seven other syndicates as foreign terrorist organizations, a move the Trump administration has cited to justify its use of deadly force without warning or due process against alleged agents of the organizations. 

The Pentagon has carried out at least 13 airstrikeson boats in recent weeks, killing dozens of people and blurring the legal line between military operations and law enforcement.

Last week, Trump attributed more than 3,000 arrests, including suspects from several notorious drug-smuggling gangs, to a new federal task force that encourages cooperation between federal and local law enforcement to combat drug cartels. He said his administration would continue to act without congressional approval in its strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” Trump said. “OK? We’re just going to kill them.” 

A Sinaloa stronghold? 

The DEA’s claims about its Sinaloa sweep have been parroted by television stations and news outlets. And they’ve been further amplified by pro-Trump YouTube personalities like Tyson DeLaCruz.

DeLaCruz’s 10-minute video on the Franklin sweep, headlined “Homeless Camp Used as Cartel HQ—27 Busted in New Hampshire,” has racked up nearly 150,000 views. 

“This case shows that the cartel problem isn’t just a border problem,” said DeLaCruz, who is based in Las Vegas, in the video. “It’s a national security issue affecting communities from Mexico to Main Street America. When a small New Hampshire town can have a major Sinaloa Cartel operation, nowhere is safe.” 

In most complex federal criminal cases, meticulous indictments identify suspects by full name and nation of origin, often including colorful street nicknames. That was true in a recent DEA bust, when a sweeping indictment unsealed in September targeting the Sinaloa Cartel identified 26 suspects by name, including two alleged ringleaders, both Mexican nationals, who are accused of narcoterrorism.

None of that happened in the Sinaloa crackdown in New England in August. The DEA released little more than a state-by-state tally: 64 arrests in Connecticut, 49 in Massachusetts, 33 in New Hampshire — most of them in Franklin — 11 in Maine, 10 in Rhode Island, and three in Vermont. 

With so few details from federal authorities, the roundup in Franklin has offered the clearest window into whom they targeted. Local police, who worked with the DEA, publicized the raids on Facebook, posting mugshots of 25 people.

The social media post garnered more than a thousand comments, some mean-spirited, about the worn faces of the defendants, whom many recognized from high school or the aisles of the grocery store.

“I understand the stigma of addicts out there and how easy it is to hate on them, but they are still humans,” one commenter wrote in protest. “They need help, they need support, and they need community.” 

The Globe found that only three people arrested in Franklin were accused of dealing sufficient quantities of drugs for them to be held in jail. None face federal charges. Most were immediately released.

Fourteen of those defendants shuffled into Franklin’s small courthouse to be arraigned on Oct. 20. They had been free since the raids, and there were no extra security precautions in the courtroom to suggest they were part of a violent drug syndicate.

“We’re drug users, but that’s all,” defendant Salvatore Vespa, who was awoken in the raids by a flash-bang grenade, told the Globe in an interview. “What’s the name of the cartel again?” he asked a reporter.

Nearly all of the defendants who appeared in person last week told reporters that they struggled with drug addiction and were angry that they were labeled Sinaloa affiliates.

“They put us in danger,” said Hannah Gonthier, who was arrested in the woods where she lives in a tent. “They wanted to accomplish something huge. They didn’t care how. They lied.”

Addiction has taken a toll on Franklin. The small city, perched where the Winnipesaukee and Pemigewasset rivers converge to form the Merrimack, has been ravaged by an opioid crisis that has intensified over the last couple of years, residents said. Homelessness has surged. Addicts cluster in encampments along the rivers, sleeping in tents and tumbledown shacks near the cemetery and behind a shuttered Rite Aid.

“I hate to say this because I’m proud of where I live, but Franklin’s got a drug problem,” said Mike Barney, 34. 

Barney and other neighbors watched as a local couple who lived in an apartment across the way — Vespa, 50, and Sonya Spooner, 47 — sank into addiction. By Aug. 26, Spooner and Vespa were sleeping in a motorhome in their driveway. 

At 8 a.m. that day, dozens of heavily armed federal agents and local police swarmed the house. A flash grenade tossed into the motorhome sounded as if a dumpster had dropped from the sky, producing a bang so loud one neighbor said people “could have heard it in Concord.” 

On the same morning, federal agents and local cops busted through the door of a blue Victorian apartment house a mile away on Aiken Avenue. Authorities pulled a man and woman outside, zip-tied their hands behind their backs, and sat them on the driveway. 

The DEA tweeted a photograph of agents standing over the pair that was published on news websites from Mexico to Israel to Spain under headlines touting the arrest of “hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel members.”

The woman, Jessica Gaudette, 42, was charged with six felonies, the most serious accusations faced by anyone rounded up in Franklin. The man, Tyler Alati, 35, was a Franklin High School graduate who grew up racing cars. He told the Globe that police immediately released him and did not ask him any questions about a cartel.

“He’s just a local kid that’s got a problem,” said his father, Scott Alati. 

The DEA expressed pride about the agency’s effort to clean up Franklin. 

“What made that operation special was that it had a positive impact on a community,” Forget, the DEA supervisor, told the Globe in an interview days after the raids. “We’re not talking about Boston, right? We’re talking about a smaller community.”

A DEA news release in late August acknowledged that some of those arrested in Franklin were “unrelated” to drug trafficking. But in interviews,Forget stressed that those arrested in New Hampshire’s least populous city were big players in the drug trade.

“Everybody that we arrested had a role in the cartel,” said Forget. “At DEA, we don’t go after retail distributors, we don’t go after users. We go after organizations.” 

Franklin Police Chief Daniel Poirier took issue with the DEA’s characterization of the raids in a recent interview with the Globe, saying the claims about a Sinaloa takedown have made “a mockery” of what were legitimate arrests.

Poirier added it was also “not accurate” to suggest the encampment where 10 suspects were rounded up was a cartel stronghold. 

“None of these folks are going to Mexico,” he said.

‘We weren’t involved’

The DEA touted that it arrested 49 people in Massachusetts as part of the sweep. But the Globe was only able to identify two cases in state and federal court in which the word “Sinaloa” appeared in documents. 

One was that of Camryn Guillaume, 34, of Stoughton, who was arrested by Randolph police in a cemetery and found with $88,300 in cash and 28 baggies stamped with the phrase “Cartel de Sinaloa,” suggesting the drugs originated with the cartel. Another Massachusetts case was that of a man accused of selling fentanyl to an undercover cop in the Home Depot bathroom in Tewksbury.

In other New England states, the Globe’s findings were much the same as those in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

In Maine, joint patrols by Scarborough police and DEA agents led to three arrests. Two were of alleged shoplifters, and the third involved a man spotted inside a red Corvette that was doing donuts at a church parking lot. He was allegedly in possession of 2 ounces of cocaine.

Reporters were met with similar confusion from officials in Vermont, where the Globe checked with 12 law enforcement agencies, and Rhode Island, where the Globe contacted 15 agencies, including the offices of the state attorney general and the US Attorney.

 

In Connecticut, the DEA said it logged 64 arrests and seized more than 15 pounds of fentanyl.

After the Globe presented its findings to the DEA, several New England police officials called reporters proactively. Hartford Police Chief James C. Rovella said he reached out to “defend the DEA” because his narcotics unit “relies on these folks quite a bit.” In this sweep, Rovella said federal agents spearheaded significant busts, but the chief stopped short of backing the DEA’s claim that high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel members were operating in his city.

“No, I couldn’t say that,” Rovella said. “I can say that there were members associated with the Sinaloa Cartel that were arrested here.”

‘Fear-mongering for the worst reasons’ 

The Sinaloa Cartel has for decades been a key supplier of illegal narcotics in the US. Based in the eponymous Mexican state, the cartel’s dominance has attracted the persistent attention of US law enforcement amid the war on drugs.

A decade ago, a cousin of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious Sinaloa leader, was prosecuted in US District Court in New Hampshire. Jesus Manuel Gutierrez Guzman, who hailed from Culiacan, Sinaloa’s capital, was sentenced to 16 years in prison. 

Guzman and his associates had unwittingly partnered with a team of undercover FBI agents and set up fake fruit distribution companies — including one in New Hampshire. The goal had been to ship hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine to Spain, where Sinaloa wanted to expand.

Five cartel experts told the Globe the group operates a large, complex web of networks that creates several layers of separation between Mexico and street corners in New England. 

They said cartels typically don’t dispatch large numbers of high-ranking operatives to establish local franchises in far-flung places like New Hampshire. 

“It’s not like there’s just kingpins and retailers,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “The average drug imported from Mexico can easily be transacted four or five, possibly even six times inside the United States before it gets into the hands of the person who is going to use it.”

If powerful cartel members are present in the US, they would more than likely be focused on money laundering, rather than street-level distribution, according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University. 

The overblown rhetoric about the Sinaloa crackdown is a hallmark of the Trump administration, which often stirs public alarm to justify emergency action, said Victor M. Hansen, a professor at New England Law in Boston who was a lawyer in the US Army’s legal branch for two decades.

“Everything is a terrorist threat, everybody is a really bad dude, everybody is an enemy,” Hansen said. “And when you kind of whip up the public imagination and dialogue to that level … you’re going to respond to everything as if everything is a serious crisis.”

“It’s fear-mongering for the worst reasons,” he added.<<