@sreynolds
National security law and policy, NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Former intelligence and counterterrorism lawyer, US Department of Homeland Security. Former Brennan Center. Views my own, rarely the government's. >> Signal: sreynolds.16
What's with the wild numbers about threats to ICE? 1200% more here, 8000% there. A new review shows only one agent has died during immigration enforcement since 2003, of a heart attack.
The work is dangerous: for the public when DHS agents escalate violence.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
www.npr.org/2023/11/15/1...
There it is: Noem out, Mullin in
The Defense Department spent $38,000,000 LESS on FOIA in FY 2025 than it did in 2024.
This is a 37% decrease.
Other agencies do not report nearly the same drop in spending, in fact many spent more in 2025 than 2024.
pclt.defense.gov/Portals/140/...
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...
new: highlands reit, a small chicago-based real estate firm, is renting an empty prison it owns in colorado to ice and private prison giant geo group.
highlands is part of a network of private contractors hoping to get a cut of the $45 billion allocated to warehouse immigrants through 2029.
Administrative burdens: Policymaking by other means
Police contractor Axon hopes to profit from outrage over ICE abuse by selling ICE a body-worn camera for every agent. Any accountability upsides are outweighed by giving ICE thousands of hours of video it can feed into surveillance tools and edit into propaganda.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
In the past year, metro Atlanta saw more evictions than all of New York City—despite having *one-quarter* the renters.
Multiple Atlanta apartment complexes averaged an eviction a day.
"The numbers are mind-blowing," said Grace Hartley of Princeton's Eviction Lab.
NYPD arrests man in Washington Square Park snowball fight gothamist.com/news/nypd-ar...
You can't sue the government if postal workers accidentally drop the glassware you ordered or lose a letter from your pen pal
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that this means you also can't sue if postal workers refuse to deliver your mail because you're Black
ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/posta...
1/ The dispute between Anthropic and DOD over the limits of using AI in warfare is escalating. I’ll have more to say on what these limits should be in a @brennancenter.org report out next month. But for now, here’s what you need to know, and what’s truly at stake 🧵:
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/t...
Aggressive charging decisions of two Northern CA district attorneys to go after student protestors read a lot like the federal crackdown on justice movements under the antifa executive order and NSPM-7.
As always, a conviction is an afterthought. The charges alone can chill dissent.
Disheartening.
I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.
Very Serious academic discipline
Columbia economics professor telling students they *must* use AI for reading assignments, for coding assignments, for lecture supplements.
Why not just let AI run a simulation of a college education and call it a day? You can get a little NFT diploma and show it off to your ChatGPT girlfriend too.
One fun angle here is how rote the warrant process is. Warrants are reviewed and approved in private.
They are approved in almost every instance—like very close to 100%. One study found the median approval time is 3 minutes.
Strong protection or rubber stamp?
harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...
Definitely the former.
In a note embedded on top of an FAQ question, “What is the average length of stay for the aliens?” Tim Kaiser, the deputy chief of staff for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, asked David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive whom The Washington Post described as an adviser overseeing an ICE division that manages detention center contracts, to “Please confirm” that the average stay for the new mega detention centers would be 60 days. Venturella replied in a note that remained visible on the published document, “Ideally, I'd like to see a 30-day average for the Mega Center but 60 is fine.”
NEW: DHS left embedded comments in a PDF outlining its plans to warehouse immigrants, identifying the architects and laying bare the gross extent of its regulatory capture. Great scoop by @regret.bsky.social:
www.wired.com/story/metada...
TL;DR you're not safe from Ring's massive network of cameras just because they officially cut ties with Flock, the popular government surveillance contractor.
I spoke to @moreperfectunion.bsky.social about recent developments at Amazon Ring.
ICE offers jobs to FIRED police officers. If they don't follow rules in their current job, what makes ICE believe they will follow rules at ICE? This is contemptible and highlights their active recruitment of lawless agents.
DHS has a whole agency (and massive budget) to police federal buildings. Like the rest of DHS, the agency of course needs deep, deep reforms. But they don't need the help of local cops to do it.
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
An analysis of how Illinois state police provided security for ICE and other DHS agents, thereby enabling their abuses and making state resources complicit despite limited state "sanctuary" laws:
www.justsecurity.org/124069/defen...
Funny, in this photo I see NYPD arresting people. Local cops need to stop providing support to ICE, including by helping put down demonstrations at federal buildings. That of course frees up DHS to go do more misdeeds.
Local agencies choose to be complicit. They should choose better.
Concerned about ICE's $45 billion plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers? This is what they'll look like inside. From ICE's plan for the Social Circle, GA facility. Each little dot: a person. www.socialcirclega.gov/home/showpub...
I wrote an article on my website saying that hot dog eating is a surprisingly common pastime for tech journalists. I ranked myself number one, obviously
One day later, ChatGPT, Gemini and the AI Overviews in Google Search were telling the world about my talents But this isn’t just about hot dogs
Today is also the anniversary of FDR's signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
February 19—not a great day in American history!
“He said that he understood people’s concerns, and that maybe people were ‘triggered’ by an image in the ad that showed blue rings radiating out from suburban homes. There will be fewer maps in any future ads, he said.”
Unlawful voting is incredibly, incredibly rare. Yet this draconian bill, the so-called SAVE America Act, will impose bureaucratic requirements practically insurmountable for many eligible voters.
As always that most harms poor, Black, and Brown people.
Tell your senators: vote NO 👇