LGBT
fromAdvocate.com
7 hours agoDaily newsletter 1/27
Anti-LGBTQ+ incidents, including vandalism, assault, and threats, rose nationwide; 2025 was among the most dangerous years for LGBTQ Americans.
Matthew Marrero witnessed the emotional detainment inside of 26 Federal Plaza on Nov. 24. The pair had been attending what they thought would be a joyous Green Card appointment that would cement their life together; instead, it turned into a nightmare when the Marreros were separated by ICE, and Allan was transferred from facility to facility. After months of fighting for his husband's freedom, Matthew Marrero flew to the Magnolia State on Jan. 27 for Allan's bond hearing.
William Vermie, an Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient who was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis for eight hours, told ABC News that he wasn't allowed to speak with a lawyer at any point throughout his detention. The 39-year-old Vermie, who was injured in combat in Iraq during a 2006-2007 deployment, was tackled and arrested by ICE agents on Jan. 13, while standing with a crowd on a public sidewalk observing ICE agents detaining two young men in his neighborhood.
Federal agents took the child, Liam Conejo Ramos, from a running car while it was in the family's driveway on Tuesday afternoon, Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said during a news conference on Wednesday. The officers then told the child to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, essentially using a five-year-old as bait, Stenvik said.
The usual hustle and bustle of protests - the loud chants, megaphones and fists in the air - was absent on Thursday afternoon as faith leaders and activists sat in meditation outside San Francisco City Hall, starting a hunger strike to protest ICE. About 100 rabbis, reverends and activists gathered on the City Hall steps to start a 24-hour fast to condemn what they called Immigration and Customs Enforcement's militaristic and violent policies.
When she arrived, Stenvik said the father's car was still running and the father and son had already been apprehended. An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, in order to see if anyone else was home essentially using a five-year-old as bait, the superintendent said in a statement.
Your Allied Rapid Response for Santa Cruz County, or YARR, shared in a series of social media posts that an individual was reportedly taken Sunday in the Rodriguez Street area by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group, comprised of trained volunteers that verify and document immigration enforcement activity across the county, wrote that multiple unmarked vehicles were reported, including two sedans and two large SUVs. The agents apparently knocked on multiple doors at a single property near Watsonville High School, the group stated, and left when no one answered.
A gay couple in Washington, D.C. is stuck in limbo after ICE detained one husband, a Panamanian immigrant, during what had long been treated as a routine immigration check-in. Plus, Renee Good's family has retained the same law firm as George Floyd's to launch a civil investigation into her killing, and Rep. Robin Kelly has filed articles of impeachment against Kristi Noem, saying she's led a "reign of terror."
I left with a profound sense of urgency, concern, and moral responsibility. What we witnessed cannot be ignored, excused, or normalized, Khanna said in a Tuesday Facebook post. America can enforce its laws without abandoning its humanity. What we saw at the California City Detention Center is systemic neglect. A detention-industrial complex that operates without transparency or accountability does not put American values first; it puts profit first.
The parents of an Orange County man who died of sepsis in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody is suing the operator and medical provider of a Mojave Desert detention center that houses detainees facing possible deportation. Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, of Westminster died on Sept. 22 at Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, a day after he was transferred there from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and 37 days in custody. He had complained for weeks of pain in his abdominal and buttocks areas and treated with pain medication, according to the lawsuit filed on Dec. 31 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The Bureau of Prisons shut down FCI Dublin, a former minimum-security women's facility, in 2024 after news broke of the repeated sexual abuse of inmates, deteriorating and uninhabitable infrastructure, and cover-up and retaliation from the former prison's guards and staff. Felony charges were levied against the facility's warden, chaplain and several guards, who were suspected of running a rape club, resulting in nine convictions.
She went inside, while her husband remained outside, but an unexpected message informed him that he, too, had to enter the building. At that moment, the officers told them that one of them was going to be deported, but that the couple had to choose who it would be. She said she would leave because he was the one who worked and supported the household. In the end, it was the mother who remained in the United States.
The FBI has infiltrated a signal chat used by court watchers simply to know what's on the docket in the cases in this building, to identify where ICE agents are, and while engaging in constitutionally protected non-violent legal activity, the FBI in a throwback to the days of J Edgar Hoover, is infiltrating and surveilling nonviolent, legal, constitutionally protected political activity, and I have to tell you: I am outraged by it,