ICE Kills Again

Here are six stories I wanted to share from my recent surfing around the internet.

Indeed. We will win. I’m glad you’re here.

#1: An ICE Killing in Maine

The Lewiston Sun-Journal’s Reuben M. Schafir writes about the latest ICE killing by mistaken identification in Biddeford, Maine:

The little girl was still in Bluey pajamas.

No older than 3, she was trying to smell the flowers.

At her side, a pink rolling bag.

Her father, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had just been fatally shot and yanked from a car he’d been driving. Now, he lay handcuffed in the street, where he would remain for five hours.

Guerrero was not the target of the ICE investigation. He had a work authorization and a Social Security number.

But death isn’t the penalty even if Guerrero had been the target of the investigation or was working here without authorization. Based on what we know about the shooting and the video that authorities have released, there is no justification for an ICE agent to fire multiple shots into a moving car.

As Noah Bertatsky explains, the poorly trained people recruited by ICE for Stephen Miller’s ethnic cleansing campaign understand that their mission from the Trump regime is to murder non-white people.

Yesterday ICE agents shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old man for whom ICE did not even have an arrest warrant. A few days earlier, ICE shot and murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who has lived in the US for decades. In both cases, ICE agents claimed that the men they killed were threatening to ram them with their cars. ICE has used this excuse before, and been caught lying. In Araujo’s case, witness testimony already contradicts ICE accounts. Immigration agents have now killed at least eleven people during enforcement activities; at least another 54 have died in ICE custody.

Every one of those deaths should be investigated; every one of the perpetrators should be tried and held accountable. It’s also important to realize, though, that these deaths are not accidental, nor are they best understood as failures to follow sober, professional law enforcement procedure. ICE agents who murder immigrants, or brown people, or those standing near immigrants and brown people, are deliberately and dutifully following the clear directives of the president and his fascist goons. Said goons have made it clear, over and over, that they want immigrants (and brown people, and Black people) ethnically cleansed, either through removal or extermination.

This mindset cannot be fixed.

ICE must be destroyed. Everyone involved must be held accountable by the next administration for the crimes against humanity they are committing in the streets and in their concentration camps. We must look at what has been done in our name to ensure it never happens again.

• ICE agent kills man in Biddeford, spurring protests (Reuben M. Schafir, Lewiston Sun-Journal, Link to Article)
• ICE’s Mission Is Murder (Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible, Link to Article)

#2: Are We Fighting People Like Lindsey Graham or Praising Them?

Senator Graham was one of the Trump regime’s leading congressional enablers. He facilitated many of the Trump regime’s anti-Constitutional actions. He was the leading proponent of the disastrous Iran War—his latest disastrous conflict. He treated Christine Blasey Ford with the utmost disrespect during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. He tried to steal Georgia for Trump in the 2020 election. He disrespected the Capitol police who protected him during the January 6 insurrection. Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti reminds us that Graham has sponsored legislation proposing a particularly cruel abortion ban since 2013.

That’s the short list.

Democratic elected officials could have chosen to be silent after hearing the news about the sudden passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. They could have just extended condolences to Graham’s friends and family.

Instead, leading Democrats like Senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Andy Kim went out of their way to discuss how nice Graham was to them and how much they enjoyed working with him.

Democratic elected officials rightly explain in their fundraising emails and text messages how we are facing an emergency where the continuation of our democracy is at stake.

So, it makes me angry when I see the elected officials who are theoretically leading that fight go out of their way to praise the Trump regime’s leading quisling.

In the Senate cloakroom, Graham may have been a fine person to have around. But, as Jonathan Larsen explains in The F*ucking News, that’s not how most of us experienced Graham’s work.

Democratic senators on Sunday revealed a hell of a lot about how they see their jobs after the lifelong mission of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to compromise his principles was cut tragically short by a heart attack Saturday.

Sunday saw an outpouring of non-glee from congressional Democrats that centered on how Graham had treated them individually over the years, with no reflection of how Graham had collectively treated the people Democrats represent.

<snip>

Which is a mistake of essentialism but also narcissism. They are literally the only ones who give a shit how charmingly Graham shined them on. Their job is to represent their constituents, to reflect how those constituents suffered under Graham.

Seriously. Read the damn room. Senator Graham harmed a lot of your constituents during his career, particularly while a leading member of Team Trump.

That kind of myopic thinking creates even more harm for people who are wondering why the people who should be fighting back are celebrating someone who did them harm.

As Rev. Angela Denker explains in the Axis Mundi Network’s Daily Brief, focusing only on how Graham was kind to his colleagues makes the people he harmed feel like they are being forgotten.

One of the earliest pieces of advice I received in ministry concerned funeral preaching.

The instruction was simple: speak the truth in love.

That guidance has stayed with me because funerals are moments when words carry unusual weight. Families are grieving. Communities are searching for meaning. It becomes tempting to canonize the deceased or to ignore difficult truths in the name of kindness.

But that impulse can unintentionally deepen wounds.

Imagine sitting in a church pew after years of suffering because of someone’s decisions or actions and hearing only glowing praise from the pulpit. Instead of offering healing, that kind of selective storytelling can ignore real pain.

The same principle applies to journalism and politics.

When public officials issue tributes that omit the harms caused by another public official’s exercise of power, people who lived with the consequences of those decisions can feel invisible once again.

Yeah. That’s not a great way to energize your voters or demonstrate you are ready to lead the fight against the Trump regime.

Furthermore, do these Democrats understand that they expressed support for a person who lied about Renée Good’s murder while ICE is actively killing other people?

These are the kinds of actions that make people believe Democrats are weak. Prioritizing rules over outcomes. Prioritizing personal relationships over the battle we are waging for our democracy.

• Congressional Dems Mistake Graham Death as Being All About Them (Jonathan Larsen, The F*cking News, Link to Article)
• Eulogizing Lindsey Graham: The Problem With Sanitizing Political Legacies (Rev. Angela Decker, Axis Mundi Network, Link to Article)
• Lindsey Graham's Cruel Legacy (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)

#3: Schumer Spreads Falsehood about God and America

Sigh. Here’s another example demonstrating how a Democratic leader doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the fight to protect our democracy from Trump. Given that key parts of the Trump coalition are Christian nationalists and evangelicals, I would expect Democrats to refrain from spreading easily debunked lies about the political and religious views of the founding generation.

But, as Jonathan Larsen explains, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had another idea.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) marked the July 4th holiday by sharing a falsehood about America’s founding fathers that’s in lockstep with the Republican Party’s theocratic claims.

On one of the social-media platforms where it appeared, Schumer’s post was edited to correct another error, but the one about God and the founders was allowed to stand.

In a post on Bluesky time-stamped 8:58am, Schumer’s official account published the fictional claim that America’s founders called the country “God’s noble experiment,” without attributing any ostensible source:

Several people noted that the only sources they can find for this anecdote are other speeches made by Senator Schumer. He has been using it, Larsen explains, in one form or another since at least 2003.

Yale Professor of History and American Studies Joanne Freeman, who is an expert on the revolutionary era, responded to Schumer:

Right now there is a concerted effort by Christian nationalist supporters of the Trump regime to remake our nation in their preferred vision. They want to ban abortion nationwide. Ban contraceptives. Overturn the 19th Amendment so only men can vote.

As a part of that effort, they falsely claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Democratic leaders should not feed that claim, even inadvertently, and especially by sharing something that isn’t true.

• Schumer Pushes Debunked Lie about God and America (Jonathan Larsen, Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, Link to Article)

#4: Trump’s New Red Scare

The president has a new favorite word: communist. He is seeing communists everywhere, especially among Democrats who oppose him.

Every so often it is easy to tell that Roy Cohn (Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Red Scare of the 1950s) was one of Trump’s most significant mentors (derogatory).

But as the charges of communists were a lie when McCarthy and Cohn told them in the 1950s, they are lies today.

And as Press Watch writer Dan Froomkin argues, our media outlets should be making it clear that Trump’s communist claims are lies.

Donald Trump’s latest Big Lie is that Democrats are godless communists who want to destroy the country. They are animals, thieves, and lunatics who want to kill Christians, he says. They pose the greatest threat to our country since its founding and must be rooted out like cancer and sent into exile.

I am not making this up.

But rather than debunk Trump’s wildly dishonest, unhinged, and inflammatory new rhetoric, our major news organizations have responded largely with mild stenography – effectively amplifying his lies.

When they should be definitively stating that Trump is wrong, and that Democrats are not actually godless communists, they instead sanewash Trump’s calumnies by casting the victory of a handful of pragmatic and pugnacious democratic socialists as the Democratic party’s dangerous lurch to the left.

We are in year 11 of the Trump political era, and our elite media still haven’t figured out how to handle his lies in a way that doesn’t give them more power.

Is there any way we can get our media to fix this before, as rumored, Trump gives a national address to lie about the 2020 election on Thursday?

• Trump’s crazed lies about ‘communists’ demand media debunking (Dan Froomkin, Press Watch, Link to Article)

#5: ICE Investigates and Threatens Critics

Department of Homeland Security agents have been tracking down and threatening critics of the ICE killing and ethnic cleansing program.

In addition to the intimidation created by having federal agents track you down, they are trying to get people to sign fake warning notices.

Needless to say, the First Amendment protects criticism of the government—even the Trump regime. People targeted are now filing federal lawsuits in response. As The Verge’s Gaby Del Valle writes:

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, DC, Streever says he didn’t threaten anyone. Shortly after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, Streever emailed Todd Lyons, at the time the acting director of ICE. “You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher,” Streever’s message read in part. “Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness.” The message castigated Lyons, warning him of his “downfall” — but the consequence, it said, would be “the burden of knowing the truth about yourself.”

Streever wasn’t arrested over the message. But the notice warned him that it “MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.”

The warning Streever received isn’t an isolated incident. For much of the past year, DHS has been going after people who criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in emails and social media posts, accusing them of threatening federal personnel or “doxing” agents whose identities are already known to the public. OPR has opened more than 100 investigations into “incidents of doxing and threats” involving ICE, Wired reported this week. Unlike the recent arrests and prosecutions of so-called antifa members, no criminal charges have apparently been filed in these cases — but especially against the backdrop of a larger crackdown, the threat to civil liberties is clear.

• ICE agents are making house calls for online critics (Gaby Del Valle, The Verge, Link to Article)

#6: When Tracy Chapman Was a College Soccer Player with a Guitar

Wait: a story that combines soccer, New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) athletics, and Generation X music icon Tracy Chapman?

Why yes, I was excited for this article. And it exceeded my expectations.

Roger Bennett, one of the co-founders of Men In Blazers, the largest soccer podcast network in the United States, is a massive fan of Tracy Chapman and her hit song “Fast Car.”

So I was not surprised to learn that MiB Chief Content Officer Jonathan Williamson was tracking down the story about Tracy Chapman’s one-year college soccer career. He writes:

The photograph is grainy. A player streaks down the field in an all-white uniform. At her feet, a distinctly black and white paneled soccer ball, the kind no amount of lo-res could render unrecognizable. Her opponent, only partially in frame, gives chase. A number of people line the field, hands protecting their eyes from the sun, watching this woman.

Tracy Chapman. THE Tracy Chapman.

The photograph arrived in my inbox with a message.

“I have finally received a response from the Tufts University Archive regarding Tracy Chapman’s involvement in soccer.”

Yep. Tracy Chapman was a member of the 1982 Tufts University women’s soccer team. And Williamson reached out to the coach of that team, Bill Gehling, and some of Chapman’s teammates and created an oral history about that season.

A focus point of their conversations was a bus trip to Maine that fall.

Lynn Roth: Halfway through the season, we had an overnight trip to Maine.

Heather Sibbison: It was a long bus ride away, and she brought her guitar on the bus, and I remember thinking, “Oh, isn’t that cute? The freshman’s going to sing some songs.” And, you know, you always hope they’re not going to embarrass themselves.

Bill Gehling: I was a little bit of a guitar player and singer myself, you know? And so, I brought my guitar to sing a song, and I did. She opened her mouth.

Heather Sibbison: Everybody just went, “Oh my God.” It was the first time I’d ever heard her sing. She was incredible. We knew she was incredible from the get-go.

Bill Gehling: It literally took three seconds to realize this was something completely different. A whole different level. Her voice was incredibly deep and powerful.

Nicole Crepeau: I had never heard a voice like it. It was just so powerful. Unique. Kind of mesmerizing for me.

Heather Sibbison: I think we all were like, “There’s a lot more to Tracy Chapman than we realized.”

It’s a great story, and not just because my beloved Bowdoin College tied that team 0-0 during that road trip to Maine. As Bowdoin’s sports information director, I met Gehling several times since I assigned myself to cover the women’s soccer program on game days.

And, thanks to this story, I realize I am just one degree separated from one of my favorite singers.

• Give Me One Season to Play Here: Tracy Chapman’s Year on the Soccer Field (Jonathan Williamson, Narratively, Link to Article)

Useful Websites and Information Trackers
I Wanted to Share

Watching the Oligarchs

• Is Elon Musk a Trillionaire Right Now? (Jason Sattler, LOLGOP Studios, Link to Article)

Election Data

• 2026 Election Calendar (The Downballot, Link to Article)
• Ultimate Data Guide (The Downballot, Link to Article)

Iran War Consequences

• Strait of Hormuz Shipping Trackers (hormuztracker.com | hormuzstraitmonitor.com)

Trump Regime Authoritarianism

• Trump Action Tracker (Making Sense of US Politics, Link to Article)
• Executive Watch [Trump Abuses of Power] (Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, The Unpopulist, Link to Article)
• ICE Warehouse Tracker (Project Salt Box, Link to Article)

Trump Regime Corruption

• Kleptocracy Tracker Timeline (Anne Applebaum, SNF Agora Institute, Link to Article)

Follow me on BlueSky to see the stories I’m finding and the stories I’m sharing throughout the day.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

Bluesky Social