ICE Takes Terror Campaign to Maine – The Thursday AM Quickie 1/29/26
Due to unforeseen circumstances, you’re stuck with me and my (recently enjoyed) recipe suggestions for the rest of the week. Can I offer you an egg (with cheese, mushrooms and squash) in these trying times? Or what about an egg you can put syrup on? Corey will be back soon. – Whitney
ON THE SHOW TODAY
1/29: Emma is hosting solo today, and her guest is César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and author of Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the Criminal Alien.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Thanks again paid subscribers!
Today you’ll read a slightly abbreviated Quickie covering immigration agents’ shell game in Maine, Trump’s saber rattling at Iran, and a pissed-off mayor in Italy.
Tell your friends to sign up for this M-F newsletter at AMQuickie.com!
THE BIG NEWS
ICE Takes Terror Campaign to Maine, Runs Familiar Playbook
The Trump regime has sent its ethnic cleansing shell game to Maine, in which agents snatch up Black and Brown people of any immigration status and move them around the country so their families and lawyers can’t find them, according to The Guardian and the NYT. It’s the same tactic they’ve used in Minneapolis, New York, and everywhere else they’ve brought their operations. The Guardian has a concise summary of how it works:
Most immigrants lost their first layer of legal protections in September, when the federal Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that people who crossed the US border unlawfully are no longer eligible for release on bond, reversing years of legal precedent.
Now, lawyers are increasingly turning to habeas petitions, which make use of a detainee’s rights to challenge their detention, said [Jenny Beverly, an immigration attorney with Haven Immigration Law]. The catch is that these petitions must be filed in the same jurisdiction where a detainee is in custody. If a detainee is moved quickly, lawyers lose the opportunity to challenge their detention.
There are only a handful of lawyers who are trained to file habeas petitions in Maine, Beverly said, so an influx of requests could overwhelm the system.
“ICE came with the machinery in place to get people out of here as soon as possible. We are racing against the clock as soon as we get a phone call to get something filed,” Beverly said. “Frankly, I feel that enforcement was done [at this pace] on purpose so that we can’t keep up.”