DHS claimed "an ICE agent had fired 'defensive shots' into Martinez's vehicle after Martinez 'intentionally ran over' another agent." But body cam video now "shows that Martinez's vehicle, a blue Ford Fusion, was stationary or going at a very low rate of speed when he was fatally shot."

Drones in Santa Fe. Folks might want to read “Your Data Will Be Used Against You” as you make your choices about whether to continue the program. www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_n...

Today, I spoke w/Frayla Tarpinian, the Executive Director of the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services, about how an impending budget shortfall could lead to disaster for Public Defense in the state. open.spotify.com/episode/4v7A...

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there. They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

We are opening up our amazing Artist in Residence fellowship again. If you know any formerly incarcerated artists or artists otherwise directly impacted by state repression, please share. It's an incredible opportunity with a wonderful organization. civilrightscorps.org/artist-in-re...

Emmanuel Damas, 56, died in ICE custody on Monday. Damas came to the US from Haiti seeking asylum. After six months in ICE custody—the last four at CoreCivic's Florence Correctional Center—he died from complications from a tooth infection, according to ICE. A tooth infection. He's death number nine.

Today, I spoke w @rebeccawallace.bsky.social of @cofreedomfund.bsky.social & Kyle Giddings of @ccjrc.bsky.social to explain how Colorado's conservative, tough on crime coalition influences CO's criminal justice policy despite the dems controlling all 3 branches. open.spotify.com/episode/6QbR...

SCOOP: An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. This surveillance can happen through all sorts of apps, such as video games, news apps, weather trackers, and dating apps.

I wrote a very long report about how public defenders are constantly underfunded that delves into the ongoing debates within the legal community about how to ensure that people charged with crimes are offered high quality representation.

This report does a fantastic job of documenting a ridiculous crisis - there are only two ways out, arrest fewer people or hire more public defenders. Jdxs are going to have to do one or the other and continuing to drag their feet is only going to make the situation worse.

Twelve years later, the NYPD is still not in compliance with the court orders from Floyd v. New York, the lawsuit that found the city's stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional (by @reuvenblau.bsky.social, @thecity.nyc) www.thecity.nyc/2026/02/26/n...

Today, I spoke w/Maggie Bott and Bob Kolstad, Hennepin County Public Defenders, and Brandon Garcia, a policy aide to Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Paige to discuss how the people of Minneapolis organized to resist DHS's occupation of the city. open.spotify.com/episode/2Qf9...

Drug and alcohol testing is almost always a condition of probation. For most, this doesn't aid rehabilitation - it can be detrimental to it. Use this brief to urge the court to take a more individualized approach to your client's supervision! datafordefenders.org/wp-content/u...

LATE & BREAKING: An epic 18.5 of 20 of Justice Forward Virginia’s CJR legislative priorities have passed one chamber of the VA General Assembly and are headed to the other chamber at Crossover! Let’s go!!! You can see a detailed breakdown here justiceforwardva.com/2026-priorit... #VALeg

The official ICE explanation: the detainee was murdered in order to prevent him from committing suicide. ICE officials this week reported that the death of a 55-yr-old Cuban man at the El Paso concentration camp was the result of the staff’s “spontaneous use of force” to “prevent harm.””

This was a great conversation about how the changes made to policing between 1898 and 1920 gave us the modern world.

Today, I spoke w/ @mguariglia.bsky.social about his book Police and the Empire City. In it, Matthew details the early history of the New York Police Department. By understanding this history, we can better understand why the modern NYPD operates as it does. open.spotify.com/episode/70E3...

Future public defenders: There’s an intensive, skills-based immersion into indigent defense at Michigan Law—taught by current/former defenders (plus alumni in the field). To learn more, check out michigan.law.umich.edu/public-defen.... #PublicDefense #MichiganLaw

Your data will be used against you. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

This is disturbing. The Chief Justice of the MN Supreme Ct met with Homan, worked out an agreement, and never announced it publicly. ICE appeared to violate it days later by violently tackling a person in the Gov Center w/out a judicial warrant. We need transparency.

SCOOP — Tom Suozzi has a Democratic primary challenger in the NY-3 congressional race. Danielle Welch (@daniwelch.bsky.social), a public defender, has officially declared her candidacy. Welch gave me this comment about launching her campaign:

NEW: The Victims Who Fought Back An Oklahoma law was supposed to help reduce the sentences of women who killed their abusers. Why are nearly all of them still in prison? By @pamelacolloff.bsky.social

Last year, the Oregon Public Defender Commision created a new contract that created a minimum caseload requirement for Public Defenders. Two chief Public Defender thought this was an illegal contract, and they sued the Commision. Yesterday, those chiefs won their case! www.opb.org/article/2026...

a man in Oklahoma was speaking out against a data center in his community. He went a few seconds over time and the city had him arrested for trespassing

INVESTIGATION: Over the last 5 months, the Banner and a coalition of partners analyzed 52 hours of footage and thousands of pages of documents from a joint THP/ICE operation targeting Nashville’s predominantly immigrant neighborhoods. Here’s what we found: (1/11) ✍️ @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

Today, I spoke w Stacey Lowe, Exec Dir of the Southwest Oregon Public Defender Services. We discussed why she felt she had no choice but to join the lawsuit against the Oregon Public Defense Commission. open.spotify.com/episode/2Qf9...

If there are any podcasters or book reviewers interested in “Your Data Will Be Used Against You” this Q&A gives great insight into what the book is all about. Check it out. #books #bookreviews nyupress.org/blog/2026/02...

Today, I was joined by Shannon Wilson and Stephen Hanlon to try and answer one question: Why did an Oregon Public Defender sue the Oregon Public Defense Commission? open.spotify.com/episode/5kgd...

!! Something I've been working on for a year is finally live!! A report from @eff.org , @justjournalism.bsky.social, and IPVM geared toward journalists but important for law makers and the general public decoding the nefarious ways police and surveillance tech gets sold, marketed, and deployed. 🧵

ICE killed a teacher in Georgia today when they chose to chase a man who posed no danger and had no criminal history.

Today, I spoke w/ @galvinalmanza.bsky.social about her new book, The Price of Mercy. In it, Emily expertly weaves social science and powerful anecdotes from her years as a Public Defender to challenge readers to rethink what public safety can/should look like open.spotify.com/episode/1S7P...

THREAD. One of the great propaganda myths of our society is that police spend their time dealing with "violent crime." ICE is no different. "Violence" is a pretext to sell it. Did you know that only 4% of all police time in the U.S. is devoted to "violent crime"?

More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...

“Unfortunately, because Congress is not taking any steps to rein ICE officers in, there really is no option other than states protecting their constituents’ rights," said Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA.

Today, I spoke w @brendonwoodspd.bsky.social Chief Public Defender of @acdefenders.bsky.social We discussed how the office is handling rising caseloads due to Prop 36 and how they are dealing with ICE enforcement around the Alameda County Courthouse open.spotify.com/episode/0P7L...

NEW: ICE has a plan to lease offices across the US as part of a secret, months-long expansion campaign. Today, @wired.com is publishing dozens of those locations. Many are near schools, medical offices, and places of worship. Vital work from @leahfeiger.bsky.social that I'm proud to publish.

We found over 70,000 cases referred to law enforcement over allegations of substance use during pregnancy — and that’s a significant undercount. In many cases, the referrals began with false positive results from flawed drug tests — sometimes triggered by the women’s prescribed medications.

Since we're re-litigating Ring's sins: How did they grow so fast? Until 2016, Ring gave out free/discounted cameras to police & giving cops perks if the public (including victims of crimes) used the officer's discount code to buy cameras--all of which meant Ring essentially made cops salespeople.

Really engaging discussion with @llassabe.bsky.social and @americancampus.bsky.social about how surveillance is used on college campuses. We are teaching self-surveillance without thinking about it. americancampuspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

More than 1,400 pending criminal cases in Oregon must be dismissed due to a huge shortage of public defenders, state supreme court ruled. Many defendants have waited months or years to get a lawyer, a constitutional violation leaving them unable to fight charges, indefinitely derailing their lives.

Today, I was joined by Rob Poggenklass and Bryan Kennedy of @justicefwdva.bsky.social Today, we discussed the slate of criminal justice reform policies hope finally pass with the state under Democrat control. open.spotify.com/episode/3jUU...

Thanks to Hunter of the Public Defenseless Podcast for featuring PJI's Sr. Staff Attorney, Samantha Pourciau on his latest episode about our class action lawsuit against Angola Prison for the forced agricultural labor of the "Farm Line." Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4...

Today, I spoke w/Samantha Pourciau of @promiseofjustice.bsky.social about the lawsuit they've brought against the state of Louisiana for its continued use of slave labor at Angola State prison. open.spotify.com/episode/4T1d...

"Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005." "it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants." www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/accountabi...

BIG news from @bloomberg.com, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* multiple commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps. This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — literal warehousing of people. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

New from 404 Media: here is the user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE. A map shows people on a map; ICE clicks them, brings up their dossier. ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target. We obtained it, you can now read the document for yourself: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

Finally got around to a bit of research I'd been meaning to explore, and: There is no documented instance of an ICE officer being identified and assaulted while off duty because he wasn't masked. www.pbump.net/o/ices-excus...

This is the beginning not the end of how surveillance will change America. We could stop it. We should. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...