TV News LIES

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by federal agents Monday while he was in a naturalization interview at an immigration office in Vermont.

Mahdawi, a Palestinian student and green-card holder, was arrested by agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Colchester, Vt., according to a court filing.

Mahdawi was a leader in the pro-Palestinian protests last spring, making him the latest such activist targeted by the Trump administration. The first and most prominent foreign-born student demonstrator now in immigration custody, Mahmoud Khalil, also attended Columbia.

“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian. His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional,” attorney Luna Droubi said.

The court filing said Mahdawi was targeted by a pro-Israel organization called Betar US, which said on social media that “visa holder Mohsen Mahdawi is on our deport list.”

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President Donald Trump’s top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they had no basis for the small Central American nation to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.

Trump administration officials emphasized that Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said he does not “have the power to return him to the United States.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

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Rain fell in sheets outside the unassuming Abingdon, Va., federal courthouse. Inside the brick building, set along a historic street, an eight day trial was reaching its conclusion. A years-long saga was finally coming to an end early Thursday afternoon.

In courtroom one, the two sides waited for the jury to return with their decision: Are five former corrections officers at Virginia's Marion Correctional Treatment Center liable for the death of Charles Givens, an inmate with health problems and severe mental disabilities?

Givens was found dead in his cell at Marion on Feb. 5, 2022. A year later, Kymberly Hobbs, Givens' grieving sister, sued for $15 million. She alleged that correctional officers Anthony Raymond Kelly, Gregory Scott Plummer, Joshua Jackson and William Zachary Montgomery participated in the savage beating of 52-year-old Givens, breaking his ribs that tore into his spleen, leading him to bleed out and die in his cell. Hobbs alleged in court filings that a fifth guard, Samuel Dale Osborne, didn't participate directly, but did not intervene to save Givens' life.

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Amir Makled thought he was being racially profiled. A Lebanese American who was born and raised in Detroit, the attorney was returning home from a family vacation in the Dominican Republic when he said an immigration official at the Detroit Metro airport asked for a “TTRT” agent after scanning his passport on Sunday. Makled said the expression on the agent’s face changed. He felt something “odd” was happening.

“So I Googled what TTRT meant. I didn’t know,” Makled said. “And what I found out was it meant Tactical Terrorism Response Team. So immediately I knew they’re gonna take me in for questioning. And that’s when I felt like I was being racially profiled or targeted because I am Arab.”

But it quickly became apparent, Makled said, that the stop was different from the type of so-called random stop Muslims and Arab-Americans have become accustomed to at US airports. The plainclothes immigration officer said he knew who Makled was and what he did for a living, according to the lawyer; agents wanted to search his phone.

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The Social Security Administration this week classified more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead in a move directed by the Trump administration, according to a White House official.

The move, as reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, classified the immigrants into the Social Security Administration’s "death master file,” which contains records of deceased individuals who possessed social security numbers. Moving them in the file means that those individuals' numbers would be invalidated and they would lose access to financial services.

Both the NYT and Reuters reported that the immigrants had previously been legally admitted to the U.S., but since had their temporary status revoked. The Department of Homeland Security identified these individuals as having criminal records or on the terrorist watch list, the White House official said.

The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, played a role in the effort, according to the NYT and the Post.

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