Inside The DHS Campaign Against U.S. Citizens

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

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The Wall Street Journal this weekend published an in-depth new analysis of what it bluntly called the “aggressive public relations tactic” the Trump administration is using against opponents of its mass deportation operation.

“Protesters, observers and bystanders arrested by federal agents have been declared terrorists and attackers in hundreds of social media posts by U.S. officials and departments since immigration operations began in the cities,” according to the WSJ, which analyzed the social media posts and tracked the underlying individual cases.

It was a substantial undertaking, as the newspaper describes it: After reviewing more than 100,000 messages on

Bottom line: “Of the 279 people accused by X officials of attacking federal agents in the past year, 181 were U.S. citizens, according to the Journal. Nearly half of those Americans were never charged with assault. None were convicted at trial.” Ten of the defendants pleaded guilty to lesser charges, according to the newspaper’s analysis. Two of the defendants – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – were shot and killed by federal agents.

Rinse and repeat

• Texas: Newly released video of ICE’s fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez raises questions about the government’s claim that he “intentionally ran over” a federal agent.
• Minnesota: Federal agents lied about why they shot and killed a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis. Their story quickly fell apart, as the Tribune reports.

Xinis resumes contempt of court investigation

I just listened to a conference call that U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called this morning in the original Abrego Garcia case, where she resumed the contempt of court investigation that had been on the back burner for months.

It was essentially an administrative exercise of setting a briefing schedule and cleaning up some long-pending motions, but make no mistake: It returns to the question of whether the Trump administration, including Trump’s Justice Department lawyers, is in contempt of court for violating its orders to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador. (She is also considering a motion to seek prior sanctions against the administration.)

A bit of news: In addition to contempt under federal rules and her own inherent power, Xinis specifically wants to be informed of the applicability of a federal law that could potentially expose Trump’s Justice Department lawyers personally to financial penalties for their alleged misconduct: “Any attorney or other person admitted to conduct business in any court of the United States or its territory who so multiplies proceedings in all cases in an unreasonable and vexatious manner may be required by the court to personally settle the excess costs, expenses and attorneys’ fees reasonably incurred as a result of such conduct.

Stay tuned.

Monitoring mass deportations

• Internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times show that federal agents followed Nashville journalist Estefany Maria Rodriguez Florez all morning before arresting her last week, raising concerns that she was targeted because she is a reporter who had reported on immigration arrests as recently as the day before hers.
• Federal judges continue to order immigration hearings but say the results are often a sham, Politico reports.
• In Minnesota, DHS has moved away from indiscriminate raids and focused on conducting more targeted enforcement operations.
• ICE is awarding untested companies hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to oversee new warehouse detention centers.

A new low, even for Trump

With new evidence emerging that the United States was responsible for the attack on a school in southern Iran that killed dozens of children, President Trump baselessly blamed Iran for the attack:

Field Boot Monitoring

• The abrupt cancellation of a planned training exercise for the headquarters element of the 82nd Airborne Division has fueled internal Pentagon speculation that the division’s Immediate Response Force could be deployed to the Middle East.
• A classified National Intelligence Council report warns that even a full-scale U.S. attack on Iran is unlikely to oust the entrenched military and religious establishment.

Latest news from the Middle East…

Iran chose Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as its new leader, and oil surged to more than $100 a barrel as the flow of goods through the Strait of Hormuz slowed to a virtual halt. More:

• Wearing a white baseball cap emblazoned with “USA” in gold, President Trump attended the ceremony in Dover for the return of the remains of six American service members killed during an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait. A seventh US service member has died in Saudi Arabia after being injured in a retaliatory strike by Iran on March 1.
• The State Department has ordered American employees of the American diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia to leave the country.
• In its first report on combat deaths in the Middle East conflict, Israel announced that two soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. The overall death toll in Lebanon stands at nearly 400 people.

Quote of the day

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago:

Our government treats the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it is just another piece of content to peruse while we wait in line at the grocery store. But ultimately, we lose our humanity when we get excited about the destructive power of our military. We become addicted to the “spectacle” of explosions. And the cost of this habit is almost imperceptible, as we become desensitized to the true costs of war.

The United States carries out its 45th boat strike

Six people were killed Sunday in another illegal US strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific, bringing the campaign’s death toll to at least 156.

Cuba next?

As President Trump openly touts regime change in Cuba, Trump’s DOJ has created a task force led by Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones to develop possible federal charges against officials or entities within the Cuban government.

Kari Lake’s appointment is illegal

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled over the weekend that the appointment of Kari Lake as executive director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and the federal Vacancy Reform Act. As a result, Lamberth reversed many of Lake’s actions while claiming to hold the position, including mass layoffs at Voice of America.

2026 Ephemeral

• TX-23: Brandon Herrera, the Republican Party’s default nominee after incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) abandoned his reelection bid, can be seen boasting about his copy of “Mein Kampf” and shooting Nazi-era weapons in clips that began circulating widely late last week. Check out Josh Kovensky’s article for more on Herrera.
• CA-48: After serving in Congress for all but one term since 2001, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is retiring rather than running for reelection in a new, more Democratic-friendly district.

Sign of the times

NYT analysis: “300 billionaires and their immediate family members have donated more than $3 billion – 19% of all contributions – in the 2024 federal elections, either directly or through political action committees. »

Florida Bass: Never mind Halligan

In a strange and poorly explained turnaround, the Florida Bar said in a statement Friday that there is no ongoing investigation into former U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan.

January 6 never ends

• Early Saturday morning, while it was still dark, the long-delayed bronze plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 was attached near an entrance on the building’s west facade.
• Former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, convicted of sedition for his role in the January 6 attack before being pardoned by President Trump, sympathizes with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, future viceroy of Cuba (both of Cuban ancestry):