In a sign that the Trump regime plans to continue its fascist repression of student protestors legally in the US and dissent in general, even as its authority to do so is being challenged in court, ICE has kidnapped another Columbia University anti-genocide protest leader. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian who has legally been studying in the United States for the past 10 years, was arrested by ICE as he arrived for a citizenship test; now the regime seems intent on deporting him under the familiar Calvinball argument that Marco Rubio can deport anyone he deems "detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests" on a whim; a tactic the administration has used to justify prior attempts to deport political prisoners Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, among others:

https://theintercept.com/2025/04/14/ice-columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi-citizenship-interview/

Palestinian Student Leader Was Called In for Citizenship Interview — Then Arrested by ICE

"Even before his friend and fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities, Mahdawi asked university administrators to help him find a safe place to live so he would not be taken by ICE agents, according to emails reviewed by The Intercept. The school did nothing in response, Mahdawi said.

After ICE abducted Khalil last month, Mahdawi sheltered in place for more than three weeks for fear of being picked up himself.

Instead of taking him off the street, however, immigration authorities scheduled the citizenship test at the Colchester USCIS office and took Mahdawi into custody when he arrived.

Now, Mahdawi is facing an order to deport him to the occupied West Bank, where escalating attacks from both the Israeli military and Jewish settlers have led to increased casualties among Palestinians.

“It’s kind of a death sentence,” Mahdawi said. “Because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”

Please also note that a number of other kidnapping targets taken by ICE, Mahdawi was previously marked out for reprisal by pro-Zionist smear group Canary Mission, and Betar, a far right hate group that's widely considered a fascist organization even in Israel; because apparently US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now taking foreign policy and national security advice from ultra-Zionist extremist hate groups that openly advocate for violence against Palestinians and protestors. Like all of the other anti-genocide protestors the regime has kidnapped, there is no evidence that Mahdawi is a "terrorist" or committed any serious crimes, except of course the Trump administration's argument that protesting a genocide is in and of itself, domestic terrorism.

Seattle's big brother camera network is being deployed along Aurora and in two very dense deployments in the Central District (CID) and a swath of Downtown.

16 on Aurora
17 in CID
30 cameras downtown

The police have self reported the locations of sixty cameras so far on the dashboard below:

https://www.seattle.gov/police/community-policing/community-programs/cctv

So, if you were wondering whether there's anything hypothetical about the "chilling effect" all this fascist repression is designed to produce in folks who oppose the Trump regime, a recent Guardian article demonstrates that it's real and ongoing - not just for anti-genocide protestors and foreign students, but for US-born critics of the regime writing in college papers too:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/07/student-journalists-remove-stories-trump

US student journalists go dark fearing Trump crusade against pro-Palestinian speech

"Fearing legal repercussions, online harassment and professional consequences, student journalists are retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students perceived to be associated with the pro-Palestinian movement.

Editors at university newspapers say that anxiety among writers has risen since the arrest of the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention fighting efforts to deport her. While the government has not pointed to evidence supporting its decision to revoke her visa, she wrote an op-ed last year in a student newspaper critical of Israel, spurring fears that simply expressing views in writing is now viewed as sufficient grounds for deportation.

Ozturk is one of nearly a dozen students or scholars who have been seized by immigration officials since 8 March, when Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and green card holder, was arrested and placed in deportation proceedings over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. Student editors report particularly acute anxieties among international students who have contributed to their newspapers, but say that requests to take down stories over fears of retaliation are coming from US citizens, too."

The reality that no authoritarian regime wants dissidents to realize, is that they literally do not have the resources to police and punish *everyone* who opposes the state. What they rely on is cracking down on high profile targets that generate a lot of publicity, folks like Mahmoud Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk, to force everyone else to self censor, lest they be next. I'm not going to criticize the student writers for asking college newspapers at institutions that have shown no ability or willingness to protect them, to erase their critiques of the regime to protect their personal safety; very few people in our society are actually prepared to suffer the horrible consequences of a fascist police state targeting them personally, and a lot of people reading this would make the same decision in their shoes.

What I will say however is that this response is exactly what the fascist Trump regime wants, and that's why it behooves the rest of society to give a fuck about the free speech rights of student protestors and journalists; and act in numbers large enough to protect us all while working to stop this fascist repression by any means necessary.

How the UK is shaping a future of Precrime and dissent management

Algorithms, facial recognition, and tightening protest laws signal a deepening surveillance state
~ Blade Runner ~

"The UK is expanding its use of predictive policing and surveillance, framing it as a response to crime, protest, and public safety. But the direction is clear: more monitoring, earlier intervention, and more control over dissent.

In early April, The Guardian revealed that the Ministry of Justice is developing a “murder prevention” system. The tool aims to identify individuals judged to be at high risk of committing lethal violence, based on data drawn from multiple agencies—social care, policing, education. The government has framed the project as a research initiative to improve risk assessments and early intervention. But its underlying logic marks a shift toward ‘precrime’—managing individuals on the basis of what they might do, rather than what they’ve done."

https://freedomnews.org.uk/2025/04/11/how-the-uk-is-shaping-a-future-of-precrime-and-dissent-management/

As if it's *trying* to prove my point that the Trump regime is engaging in the fascist policing of "ideas" and the targeted repression of those who articulate them, the US government has admitted in court that it has no legal basis to detain and try to deport Columbia University graduate and activist leader Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, besides his ideas and political positions. The government, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is straight up arguing that Kahlil's opposition to Israel's US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, which it baselessly describes as "antisemitism," represents a threat to US foreign policy objectives, which in turn allows the regime to enact a rarely used provision in the Immigration Nationality Act to justify the fascist targeting of the former student protest spokesman.

In other words, the regime is admitting that Kahlil hasn't committed a crime, but is being deported for purely ideological reasons under the guise of protecting American national security; which is more or less exactly what the administration has been saying out loud until the precise moment when someone points out that this is fascism, at which point they briefly deny it.

https://theintercept.com/2025/04/10/deportation-case-mahmoud-khalil-antisemitism-rubio-trump/

The Case Against Mahmoud Khalil Hinges on Vague “Antisemitism” Claim

"Khalil’s attorneys said it’s clear the government’s case is about cracking down on his speech in support of Palestine and represents a precedent amid the Trump administration’s nationwide attacks on universities and students. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of students since Khalil’s arrest. Many were not involved in protests at all, while some were being targeted for low-level misdemeanors.

“And where would this lead?” Van Der Hout said. “Are we going to now throw people in jail for speaking out against the Social Security cuts in this country? This is a dangerous slope, and we are taking a stand on behalf of Mahmoud, and he is taking a stand.”

“He’s decided to stay in jail and fight this case to the bitter end,” he added, “while we try to establish that people like Mahmoud have a constitutional right to speak out in this country.”

If there's an upshot here, it's that all of this is patently illegal, and even the Immigration Nationality Act little Marco is using to justify this fascist bullshit contains a provision "that prevents the secretary of state from using the “foreign policy” provision to deport someone based on an individual’s speech unless it has compelling grounds to do so." The fact that the government has refused to produce evidence that would justify deporting Kahlil probably increases his chances of being released, and soon.

The bad news of course is that the Trump regime has already ignored multiple court orders forbidding its fascist activities, and the government is openly asserting the right to target, detain, and deport, again, a *legal* permanent resident of the United States, who is married to an American citizen, for purely ideological reasons. That assertion may not survive a judge's ruling in this particular case, but with a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court in its pocket, it feels like it's only a matter of time before the regime wins one of these arguments before a more sympathetic judge - and then there is no predicting how far the new American Nazi movement will go to crush dissent and ideological opposition to its authoritarian rule.

If for some reason you still had delusions that what's going on under the Trump regime in America is somehow *not* fascism, a since deleted ICE post on "The Daily Stormer the social media site" (aka Twitter, aka X) should disabuse you of that notion quickly:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-ideas-border-crossing_n_67f80dc0e4b09493c8d88d45

ICE Says It Will Stop 'Ideas' From Crossing The Border Illegally

"It appears that the country’s primary immigration enforcement agency has, at least briefly, declared itself the border thought police. In a country that is supposed to believe in the freedom of speech and thought, this raises a host of questions.

What ideas does ICE believe are illegal? How can ideas even cross the border illegally? And how does ICE screen for these illegal ideas to stop them from coming in?

ICE did not respond to these questions but did tell HuffPost that the “post was sent without proper approval and should not have been shared.”

″‘Ideas’ should have said ‘intellectual property,’” a spokesperson for ICE said in an email.

That isn’t to say the Trump administration and ICE aren’t policing ideas that they deem “illegal,” including by stripping visas and green cards from students, denying entry to foreign visitors and arresting and deporting people for their opinions.

Chief among them is any criticism of Israel. The administration has sought the deportation of numerous students for their participation in or support for protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The most high profile of these cases are those of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk."

I don't know who needs to hear that Trump's Gestapo admitting it's policing "ideas" is a sure sign that the regime isn't "fascistic" but is in fact just doing fascism, but it is. Furthermore I don't really see the spokesman's excuse that ICE was talking about "intellectual property" as being valid because when the government acts to protect intellectual property in the context of borders, it's about keeping American IP from being stolen by foreign adversaries; ICE targets people (and apparently ideas) coming INTO the country, not leaving it.

I hate to keep quoting Maya Angelou on you folks, but not a day has gone by since Trump took office a second time where her maxim "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time" doesn't apply.

In what must be understood as a tightening of the digital panopticon the fascist Trump regime is deploying to target migrants, the administration has negotiated an agreement between ICE and the IRS to share tax data with the American Gestapo for the purpose of facilitating mass deportations, without the consent of the IRS's acting commissioner - who has since resigned in protest:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/08/irs-ice-tax-data

IRS agrees to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Ice

"A memorandum of understanding between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the IRS was filed late on Monday in a case brought by immigrants’ rights groups Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, represented by Public Citizen and other lawyers. The memo says Ice can request information from the IRS for its investigations into undocumented immigrants who have not left the country after receiving a final order of removal from a judge. It is signed by the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday evening that the acting IRS commissioner, Melanie Krause, is planning to resign, in part over being bypassed in the decision.

The lawsuit over the plans to share IRS information, filed in March, says Internal Revenue Code makes clear that tax records for all taxpayers must be confidential, disclosed only in ways authorized by statute.

“Taxpayer privacy is a cornerstone of the US tax system,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “This movement by the IRS is an unprecedented breach of taxpayer privacy laws – confidentiality which has been respected by both political parties for decades.”

Although every expansion of the regime's ability to hunt down and target migrants is an important stepping stone to a white nationalist dictatorship, this policy is particularly cruel and nonsensical. For starters, it deprives the US government of tax revenue because an overwhelming number of undocumented people do in fact pay their taxes. More importantly however, the US government and the IRS have been encouraging migrants to do so for decades, under the promise that this information won't be used to target and deport them. In one single agreement signed by two members of the Trumpenreich, the US government has simultaneously harmed the American people, and forced more migrants further underground, to break our collective promise to folks who otherwise would have stayed below the radar:

"The Trump administration has been working to get the IRS and Ice to agree on some information sharing for weeks, a way to use tax filings to aid in his mass deportations. The Washington Post reported on a draft of the agreement in March, citing current and former IRS workers who said the move would be an unprecedented change in access to tax records and upend immigrants’ willingness to file taxes.

“It is a complete betrayal of 30 years of the government telling immigrants to file their taxes,” one former IRS official told the Washington Post."

Of course, the other shoe of the regime's proposed online surveillance of immigrants using legal pathways to work, study, and reside in the United States, would eventually drop; the Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is now monitoring the social media activity of law abiding immigrants for "antisemitism" - a word that no longer has meaning when used by a regime (itself littered with antisemites and nazis) that seems to think criticizing a genocide, opposing US funding for Israel's bloodthirsty fascist government, and saying Palestinians have human rights too, is antisemitism.

https://truthout.org/articles/dhs-announces-its-surveilling-immigrants-social-media-for-antisemitism/

DHS Announces It’s Surveilling Immigrants’ Social Media for “Antisemitism”

"In a chilling statement, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin effectively said that the administration is carving out an exception to free speech rights to punish certain viewpoints.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again. You are not welcome here,” McLaughlin said.

Advocates for Palestinian rights noted that the clear goal of the administration is to suppress speech critical of Israel, as well as punish Muslim and Arab rights groups — similar to the implementation of the Patriot Act after 9/11.

“It doesn’t matter what you actually say. We are at the point where anything short of pledging allegiance to Israel is, in the eyes of the U.S. government and its many institutions, a criminal offense worthy of the infliction of state violence,” said media analyst Sana Saeed on social media."

I don't think anyone with a functioning brain needs to be told that a Trumpenreich regime full of literal fucking nazis, does not at all care about antisemitism. What it does care about is protecting its investment in a MENA region client state it uses to ensure American dominance of fossil fuel availability, and the US-funded genocide of Palestinians that state, Israel, is conducting in Gaza. Furthermore, the Pork Reich is also very concerned with creating ideological justification to unleash its Gestapo (ICE) on foreign students and Muslims in general, as part of a white nationalist agenda to establish America as an ethnostate.

The story here however isn't really about the hypocrisy of a fascist regime hell bent on both punishing dissent and bleaching the demographics of the American population; when you factor in the regime's use of online surveillance, AI technology, and ICE's Investigative Case Management database, what we're looking at here is the expansion of our police state panopticon during a period where the US government under Trump is actively looking to obliterate civil rights and apply its fascist ideological policing policies to an ever widening circle of people; a circle that consists of both immigrants and "natural born" US Citizens. You should care about this not just because immigrants are human beings who have rights just like anyone born in the US does, but because this digitized fascist repression does not have to, and almost certainly will not, stop with immigrants; who it must again be pointed out, are in the US legally and are actually "following the process" to study, work, and reside in the country.

#Fascism #Panopticon #DHS #ICE #Trump #Stephen Miller #Israel #Gaza #Genocide #Palestine #PoliceState #WhiteNationalism #KristiNoem #TriciaMcLaughlin #StudentProtests #CivilRights