NOW— Mass ICE arrests happened/are happening at the Manhattan immigration court at 290 Broadway on the 20th floor. I was just outside the building and an observer came out crying, confirmed they witnessed people getting detained outside courtrooms while families watched and wept.

A Texas county found a way to make money on migrants traveling north: cops arrested them on trespassing charges, and kept them in jail until they paid bail. When they paid, the jail handed them over to ICE. They got deported. The county kept their bail: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

Don’t miss this excellent @jherrerx.bsky.social piece on how a Texas county, under Operation Lonestar, is taking (and not returning) the bail money of migrants who have been deported. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

Step 1: Attest migrants for "trespassing." Step 2: Release on bail. Step 3: deport before hearing, forfeiting bail.

Kinney County, TX, is swindling immigrants out of their bond money by arresting them, immediately handing them over to ICE, who quickly deports them, and then keeping the money. $1.6M so far. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

me contribution to this story was taking a spreadsheet that had been printed out, roughly hand-redacted and then scanned but skewed into, well, an actual spreadsheet so we could calculate forfeited bail for these migrants.

a small Texas county found a way to make money off migrants: arrest them for trespassing, make them post bail to get out of jail, turn them over to ICE, collect forfeited bail money. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

I spent over a year fighting the county for records, including these budget docs

When Texas began arresting migrants for trespassing in '21, many paid hefty bails to get out of jail. The problem? Instead of releasing them, TX handed them over to ICE. I spent a year investigating how one county made up to $1.7 million by taking bail from deported migrants. Via @nytimes.com:

Trump has offshored his migrant detention regime. Journalists have struggled to cover the "exportations." By @jherrerx.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/feature-2/fo...

Damn! "Over the past four years, [Kinney] county has refused to return $1.7 million in bail from migrant trespass cases..." This amount would "pay for the entire sheriff’s department for a year, or the county judge and county attorney’s office combined for over three years." @jherrerx.bsky.social

"Perhaps it is because they have hit a wall deporting so-called criminals, so now they are going after children and their families in an effort to bump up their deportation statistics” Original reporting today from @jherrerx.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

More detentions lead to more deaths. @jherrerx.bsky.social asks whether we will find out - and from there whether the American public will respond w/ enough care and outrage to change policy www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

"[I]f families of dead migrants mourn publicly, if undeterred journalists get the story, will Americans care?" "The death of children can—sometimes, in the right conditions—provoke outrage. Few will ever care when adult men die in the deportation machine." @jherrerx.bsky.social #uspol #usa

"For better or for worse, the meat-packing industry relies on immigrants; changing that would likely require fundamentally changing how America feeds itself." Great story by @jherrerx.bsky.social revisiting the site of a 2006 mass deportation in Cactus, Tx. www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

A 2006 immigration raid at a beef-packing plant upended Cactus, Texas. Ten percent of the Panhandle town's residents disappeared. @jherrerx.bsky.social writes about the aftermath and what it means for President Trump’s mass deportation plans. @texasmonthly.bsky.social

What happens after an ICE raid? @jherrerx.bsky.social joins us on Your Call 10am PT to discuss. Then: RFK Jr. confirmation, CFPB closure, & mass federal layoffs. What's the latest? Chris Lehmann @thenation.com discusses. Stream live @kalwradio.bsky.social 10am PT: www.kalw.org/show/your-ca...

Last one for now. Welcome to #BlueCielo! @juliancastrotx.bsky.social @delia.bsky.social @jherrerx.bsky.social @julito77.bsky.social @latnewsletter.bsky.social @alexpadilla4ca.bsky.social @miblogestublog.bsky.social @nikkimcr.bsky.social @anacabrera.bsky.social go.bsky.app/Em6CQBg

Talked with @NYMag.flipboard.com.ap.brid.gy about how to understand Latino voting in 2024. Was the huge shift right evidence of true political realignment, or a simply a sign that this election was a referendum on inflation? The answer is “Yes.” nymag.com/intelligence...

When it comes to masculinity and Latino voting, I think we can't fully disentangle the gender split from class. More Latinas (35%) are going to college than Latinos (28%). Meanwhile traditionally masculine jobs—construction, trucking, etc—have gone decades without any real wage growth.

Her bedroom was more than 100°f inside when we arrived, her a/c was out, her dog was sent to live next door: Karen Shute didn't know how much longer she could take it. New work in the LA Times. My first team up with long time friend @jherrerx.bsky.social.

Reporting this week from our climate future: Phoenix, going into its 18th day in a row with heat over 110 Fahrenheit, with no end in sight. Last time the heat was this high, for this long, was 1974. Even a city as adapted for heat as Phoenix is struggling.

We gotta decide which platform is new Twitter, I can’t keep checking 5 apps a day

Im here for the same reason as everyone else. Excited to connect with fellow fans and celebrate our love for our number one guy Jeremy Renner!

Was gonna make a joke about Bluesky feeling like a life raft after the titanic crash, but somehow that feels too soon

Huh this app kind of reminds me of Twitter

Damn too late to the party?