Photograph ICE - or suddenly end up labeled a “terrorist” in a database?
In the United States, fears are growing that people could end up targeted by the government simply for observing deportation operations. The trigger is a series of lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security, in which activists, observers, and attorneys raise serious allegations. The cases involve license plate tracking, biometric data, DNA samples, and threats by officials to place people into a terrorism database because they participated in protests. DHS officially denies that such a database exists. That is precisely what is making these cases increasingly explosive. At the center of a new lawsuit is the couple Carlyn Williams and Xenia Pantos from Maine. During large-scale ICE operations in January, Pantos stopped on the way to work to observe federal agents carrying out a roadside operation. Pantos photographed the agents. At the same time, Pantos noticed an ICE employee photographing the license plates of other observers. A few minutes later, Pantos drove away. Nobody was arrested. The operation appeared to be over.
But hours later, Carlyn Williams received a call from an unknown number. According to the lawsuit, the caller identified himself as a Department of Homeland Security employee and asked whether anyone else used her car. After Williams confirmed that her partner also drove the vehicle, the man allegedly stated that Pantos had “stopped at an incident” that morning. According to the complaint, he then warned that Pantos could end up on a domestic terrorism watchlist because of it. The statement, according to the couple, deeply shook them. Both feared their work as foster parents could be jeopardized. Pantos later explained that they deliberately stopped observing ICE operations after that incident.
Two months later, another incident occurred. The couple had just returned from an anniversary trip to Canada when border agents pulled them aside at a checkpoint. Although they were traveling in Pantos’ vehicle, officers suddenly began asking specifically about Carlyn Williams’ car. According to the lawsuit, there was no apparent reason for the questions. Attorneys see this as an indication that the license plate information from January had been stored or flagged in some way.
It is not the only case. In Minnesota, numerous plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit describe federal agents suddenly appearing outside their homes after they had observed ICE operations. Attorneys suspect authorities used police databases to trace home addresses through license plate records. Others report losing access to the expedited travel program “Global Entry” without explanation. Amanda Thompson of Minneapolis described particularly severe fears of further consequences. She told the court she had already canceled a paid international trip because she feared being detained upon returning to the United States. She even changed her phone’s lock screen so emergency contacts and instructions in case of arrest would be immediately visible. She now lives, she said, with the feeling that she must always be prepared for the worst.
At the same time, another lawsuit against DHS is unfolding in Illinois. That case concerns DNA samples taken from four people arrested during protests against ICE. Two of them were never charged. The cases against the others were quickly dismissed. Nevertheless, the government is keeping their genetic data indefinitely. One plaintiff stated in court documents that she fears her DNA could be used to track her permanently or place her on a terrorism list. DHS rejects all allegations. A spokesperson stated that there is “no domestic terrorist database” within DHS. Of course, the agency monitors and investigates threats or attacks against officers, all within constitutional limits. At the same time, DHS refuses to provide details about its methods.
That is where the real conflict now begins. While DHS denies the existence of such lists, the Trump administration only weeks ago officially designated so-called “left-wing extremists” as a central focus of counterterrorism policy. A new strategy document refers to groups whose ideology is described as “anti-American,” “radically pro-transgender,” or anarchist. The wording remains intentionally vague. Critics therefore warn that this definition could ultimately include people who simply document deportation raids or protest against ICE. Perhaps the most disturbing statement comes from Xenia Pantos personally. Pantos said it was only afterward that they understood what consequences a brief stop on the side of the road could carry. Today, Pantos said, the overwhelming feeling is that loved ones were placed in danger. Not because of violence. Not because of an attack. But because someone allegedly took photographs of federal agents.
An Explosion in the Pacific - and Washington Once Again Provides No Evidence
The American military has once again destroyed a boat in the eastern Pacific. One person died, two others survived. U.S. Southern Command released a short video showing a speedboat racing across the water before an explosion erupts seconds later. Flames shoot from the vessel, then everything disappears into smoke. The government later stated that the vessel was a suspected drug smuggling boat. The military provided no evidence for that claim.
The attack is part of an ever-expanding operation by the Trump administration in Latin American waters. Since September, boats in the Pacific and Caribbean have repeatedly been attacked from the air or at sea. According to official figures, at least 194 people have now been killed in these operations. The administration describes the missions as a war against cartels blamed for the deadly drug crisis in the United States. But that is exactly where the controversy now begins. The Pentagon releases videos of exploding boats while offering almost no verifiable information about the people aboard or alleged drug seizures. Names are almost never released. Independent investigations do not exist. Instead, there are brief military clips and short press statements while families often learn days later that someone has disappeared.
Pressure on the Pentagon is now growing even within Washington itself. The Defense Department’s inspector general announced last week that it would launch an internal review. The investigation will examine whether the military followed required targeting procedures during the strikes. Those procedures are supposed to include risk analysis, target evaluation, and legal review before an attack. At the same time, however, the office stated that the overall legality of the killings itself would not be investigated.
Read also our investigations: Trump Speaks Openly About Violence Beyond Borders – And Government Documents in Our Possession – An Investigative Investigation
The United States is therefore effectively carrying out military killing operations outside traditional war zones - without court proceedings, without public evidence, and without transparent oversight. Several legal scholars and Democratic lawmakers now warn that Washington is increasingly blurring the line between anti-drug policy and military executions. The Trump administration rejects this criticism. From its perspective, the United States is already at war with cartels and fentanyl networks. Opponents of this strategy counter that in many cases it remains unclear who exactly was killed and whether drugs were actually present on the destroyed vessels. Those questions are becoming louder each time new videos of explosions in the middle of the ocean appear.
The War Pauses - but Iran and the United States Are Already Threatening Each Other Again
The ceasefire between the United States and Iran officially still holds - however one is supposed to interpret that while rockets continue flying - yet the situation is becoming more unstable by the day. Following new American strikes in southern Iran, Tehran is now openly accusing Washington of “unreliability” and “bad faith.” The Iranian government describes the attacks as a violation of the ceasefire and announced that no “aggression” would go unanswered. At the same time, after months of shutdowns, the regime has gradually begun restoring internet access throughout the country. For millions of Iranians, the blackout meant isolation, economic collapse, and near-total loss of contact with the outside world.
The American military described the latest strikes as “defensive.” The targets, Washington said, were missile positions and boats allegedly laying mines. The United States claimed it had acted with “restraint” despite the tense situation. In Tehran, the same events sound entirely different. There, the attacks are viewed as proof that the United States continues exerting military pressure even while negotiations are underway. The situation escalated further through new statements from the Revolutionary Guards. According to Iranian officials, at least one drone was shot down and additional aircraft were forced out of Iranian airspace. These claims cannot currently be independently verified. At the same time, Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei used the annual Hajj message to issue a direct warning to regional states. Countries in the Middle East, he declared, would no longer serve as shields for American military bases. Iran has repeatedly threatened or attacked American facilities in the region in the past.
The extent to which the negotiations are already strained also became clear in Qatar. Talks there had recently focused on extending the ceasefire and discussing the future of the Strait of Hormuz. But on Tuesday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suddenly left the country. No further details were provided. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio merely stated that further talks would likely continue for several more days. In the background remains the Strait of Hormuz - one of the world’s most important energy routes. Before the war, roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas exports passed through the narrow waterway. After fighting began, Iran largely blocked shipping traffic, sending shockwaves through energy markets. Some ships are now allowed through again, though under Iranian control and subject to fees. While more than one hundred vessels previously used the route daily, Iranian officials stated that only twenty-five ships had passed within twenty-four hours recently.
The economic consequences now extend far beyond oil markets. The months-long internet shutdown in Iran cost the economy an estimated forty million dollars per day. Online commerce and digital services nearly collapsed completely. Families abroad temporarily lost all contact with relatives. At the same time, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is now warning of a global fertilizer crisis because supply chains through Hormuz remain disrupted. The full impact may only become visible during harvest seasons in 2026 and 2027. Meanwhile, the Iranian government is also increasing pressure domestically. On Tuesday, another man accused of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad intelligence service was executed. According to official statements, the man was Gholamreza Khani Shakarab. Human rights organizations have long criticized Iran for conducting such proceedings behind closed doors and for obtaining confessions under pressure.
Meanwhile, the military situation remains extremely fragile. On Tuesday, an explosion was also reported aboard a tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Apparently nobody was injured. The cause initially remained unclear. But incidents exactly like this now show how quickly a fragile ceasefire could once again erupt into a wider regional war.
Always the Same Political Garbage - Whether From the Trump Camp or the AfD
It has now become almost impossible to tell whether statements like these come from Washington, Budapest, Moscow, or an AfD rally in Germany. The terminology shifts slightly, but the enemies remain identical. Migrants are blamed for falling wages, collapsing neighborhoods, social decay, and economic insecurity. That same old political formula is now once again being used by Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee, one of the loudest hardliners in Trump’s camp.
At this point it is barely possible to say what country such a statement even comes from. It could come from Washington, from Moscow, or from a stage somewhere in Germany where the AfD repeats its familiar message once again. The words are rearranged slightly, the language changes, but the enemy remains remarkably consistent. Migrants are blamed for declining wages. Migrants are blamed for deteriorating neighborhoods. Migrants are blamed for social collapse and economic insecurity, for everything that keeps people awake at night. It is an old formula, and Republican Congressman Andy Ogles from Tennessee is once again stirring the same mixture, one of the loudest hardliners surrounding Donald Trump.
Ogles stated verbatim:
“The real kitchen-table issue is rehabilitating real Americans whose careers, neighborhoods, and communities have been taken over by unassimilated migrants. The ASSIMILATION Act is the America-First way to accomplish this. No amnesty, no cheap foreign labor, and a massive reduction in net migration. Immigrants will not save our country - Americans will.”
One could translate those words into German and easily imagine them as part of a speech delivered somewhere between Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It is the same line right-wing parties have carried across the West for years. People are divided into two groups: the “real” citizens and those quietly treated as foreign bodies. Everything troubling a country is reduced almost entirely to migration, and in that very moment everything else disappears from the debate. Rising rents disappear. The power of large corporations disappears. Hollowed-out healthcare systems disappear, along with decades of political failures nobody wants attached to their own name. What remains is a single scapegoat, and one advantage of that scapegoat is that it usually cannot fight back.
The language itself is especially revealing. A word like “taken over” creates the impression that someone is seizing something that never belonged to them. “Unassimilated” sounds like a verdict before a single person has even been examined. And “save America” assumes the country is already disappearing, stolen quietly piece by piece. It is language that does not describe reality but manufactures fear, and that fear is the actual material from which the radical right on both sides of the Atlantic builds its politics. Andy Ogles is among Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress. Over recent years he has repeatedly drawn attention through particularly harsh rhetoric against migrants, LGBTQ people, and political opponents. His latest remarks once again show how dramatically the tone in the United States has shifted, and how little now separates it from the rhetoric long heard from far-right parties in Europe. Perhaps that is the real story behind these remarks. Not simply one congressman from Tennessee, but the sobering realization that the same fear is now being sold everywhere in the same language - and everywhere finding the same buyers.
Russia Declares Homosexuality a Disease Again - at a Psychiatry Congress
At an official psychiatry congress in Russia, homosexuality was once again portrayed as a mental illness. The statements did not come from fringe internet figures, but from Olga Bukhanovskaya, head of the scientific-medical rehabilitation center “Phoenix.” Speaking before medical professionals, she declared that homosexuality and transgender identity belonged to an alleged “transgender disorder spectrum.” Into this construct she grouped homosexuality together with fetishistic transvestism, personality disorders, schizotypal disorders, and even schizophrenia. Bukhanovskaya openly spoke about an alleged “transgender epidemic” supposedly caused by “propaganda” and deliberate influence campaigns. According to her, transgender people allegedly have “handlers” and imitate psychiatric conditions. At the same time, she described transsexuality as an innate disease and presented her own new definitions of sexual identity.
The political background of these statements is especially explosive. Russia halted its transition to the international disease classification ICD-11 in 2024. That classification officially removed transsexuality from the list of mental illnesses in 2022. Moscow justified the rejection at the time by claiming the system conflicted with “traditional values.” The language used at the congress now demonstrates how closely state ideology and parts of Russian medicine are converging. Bukhanovskaya spoke of an alleged “fifth column” within the healthcare system, referring to doctors, psychologists, and specialists holding trans-friendly views. Medical debates are therefore increasingly being transformed into questions of political loyalty.
Olga Bukhanovskaya is the daughter of the well-known psychiatrist Alexander Bukhanovsky, who became famous in the Soviet Union in part for developing a psychological profile of serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. That fact alone is drawing additional attention to her remarks both inside Russia and internationally. Human rights organizations have warned for years that Russia is moving further away from international medical standards under the banner of “traditional values.” The statements at the psychiatry congress now openly demonstrate how deeply this development has penetrated even scientific and therapeutic fields.
A Gag Order for the State - Trump Wants to Turn the Federal Government Into a Fortress of Secrecy
The Trump administration is planning a new confidentiality agreement for federal employees in the United States. Future government workers would be restricted far more extensively than before from disclosing internal information. The draft proposal from the Office of Personnel Management goes far beyond traditional classified information. Not only secret documents would be affected, but virtually any internal communication categorized as “nonpublic,” “confidential,” or “preliminary.” Particularly explosive is the threat buried in the fine print. Officially, signing the agreement would remain voluntary. At the same time, however, the document states that refusing to sign could lead to dismissal from federal service. That is where criticism from civil liberties organizations and constitutional lawyers now begins. The policy would not affect only intelligence agencies or military operations, but potentially millions of federal employees across the government.
The Trump administration justifies the measure by citing alleged leaks to the media. Specifically, it points to reports about an American operation in Venezuela during which Nicolás Maduro was captured. According to the administration, such leaks endangered American soldiers. Inside Washington, the growing impression is that the government is not merely targeting classic disclosures of classified material, but internal criticism and leaks in general. Donald Trump has relied on nondisclosure agreements for decades as pressure tools against former employees, business associates, and critics. During his first term, his administration even attempted legal action against a former employee of Melania Trump after she published a tell-all book.
During the second term, the approach intensified further. The Defense Department introduced confidentiality obligations and random polygraph tests, officially to prevent leaks. Critics viewed them primarily as loyalty tests. Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs were also required to sign confidentiality agreements while mass layoffs were being prepared internally. Legally, the administration is moving into highly sensitive territory. Under American law, confidentiality agreements cannot prevent whistleblowers from exposing fraud, abuse of power, or legal violations. That is why constitutional scholars are now warning of a climate of intimidation inside the federal government.
Esha Bhandari of the ACLU stated that the government cannot silence public employees through sweeping gag agreements. Greg Greubel of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression similarly warned that employees may ultimately come to believe they are prohibited from discussing almost anything about their work. Even if certain rights formally remain intact, fear of consequences alone could be enough to suppress criticism. The debate therefore extends far beyond individual classified documents. At its center now lies the question of how much secrecy a democracy can tolerate once the state begins treating even ordinary internal information as state secrets.
Stephen Miller Essentially Declares Millions of Poor Americans Fraudsters
Stephen Miller has once again demonstrated how the Trump administration talks about poor people. During a public appearance, he claimed the American welfare system supposedly operates on the principle of simply believing whatever people say. If someone claims their children are hungry, he said, they receive food stamps. According to Miller, the government does not even verify whether those children actually exist. “They just get the checks.” The statement is not only politically explosive but also highly disputed factually. Programs such as food assistance, Medicaid, and other welfare benefits in the United States normally require extensive proof of income, family status, residency, and identity. That is precisely why Miller’s comments immediately triggered new criticism. The portrayal suggests to millions of Americans that needy people are collecting benefits on a massive scale without oversight.
The tone behind the statement has now become typical of the Trump administration’s broader approach. Poverty is no longer framed as a social issue, but increasingly as a matter of suspicion. People applying for assistance are more and more often treated as though they must first defend themselves against allegations of fraud. In reality, however, the system primarily affects families already struggling to survive. Many applicants wait weeks for assistance, must repeatedly resubmit documents, or lose benefits over minor bureaucratic errors. Civil rights groups have warned for years that access to welfare programs in many states is already burdened with heavy bureaucratic obstacles.
Miller, however, paints a completely different picture in his distorted right-wing worldview. In his version, the government distributes benefits almost blindly and without oversight. That image is politically essential. Because once social programs are portrayed as chaotic and vulnerable to abuse, public support grows for cuts, stricter controls, and further restrictions. Particularly striking is the language itself. Hungry children no longer appear in Miller’s statements as human beings, but almost solely as potential excuses for fraud. Social assistance is gradually transformed into a system of suspicion. Critics increasingly view that transformation as a central component of the political strategy behind Trump’s welfare policies.
