We may have crossed the Rubicon in the last few days.

ICE and CBP are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in Minnesota, and while that’s tricked some of the media into moving on, neighbors are still standing up for one another. The fascists are doubling down, because they can never been seen as giving up, even when they’re losing.

We saw a Primary Election in a safe blue district in NJ where the candidate who will end up winning openly campaigned on Abolish ICE, including hosting campaign events that included ICE Watch and non-violent resistance trainings. AIPAC fucking ate it in the same race, attacking a moderate Dem for conditioning aid to Israel on not committing crimes against humanity, via a bank shot on his vote to fund ICE 6 years ago.

To be clear, we should have been abolishing ICE back then, and even a decade earlier when we had all the same evidence that our “Homeland’s” security meant undermining the Constitution, and brutalizing our neighbors. Obama’s failure to investigate Bush era Constitutional violations put the fascists on our doorstep. And directly laid the tracks to ICE using 5-year-olds as bait. Human shields indeed.

New Jersey was among a group of states who fought back when Trump stole federal school funding and we won. With the Trump Administration giving back the money and slinking back into the humid rot and plastic faces of Mar-a-Lago we have yet another example of how the fascist and Nazis hate the push back. They mask out of embarrassment, they can’t stand accountability.

Bent by the weight of sobbing children, separated from their parents at the border, at school drop off, at the doctor’s office, or at church – by unidentified men, cosplaying as soldiers, but too embarrassed to show their face, as to learn what their own children think of them

Arc by Matt Dragon - Public Square

Some had taken their helmets off, but their faces remained covered, their fear of demographics second only to the fear their kids might learn what they do when they go to “work” every day.

We cannot deport away our racist history by Matt Dragon - Public Square

Fascist are way out over their skis, in the White House, and in AIPAC's office. We're sending a pro-worker, pro-human rights, pro-immigrant, keffiyeh wearing populist to Washington DC, in the seat vacated by our current centrist Governor, that a decade ago was held by a nepo-baby generic Republican.

We must push back. We must never comply in advance. We must continue to demonstrate our love for our neighbors because the only way they can win is if we give in.

When we fight we win. Sí, se puede!

Reading

New Jersey

Many of the horrors have been happening outside of NJ, but a few things happened recently that are worth drawing attention to the Garden State.

Jersey City Faces a Stunning Budget Deficit, Report Shows by Tracey Tully

Refusing to raise taxes year after year was only one of Fulop’s crimes against good governance. Expanding spending on the police, giving tax breaks to real estate moguls, using COVID money to give tax refunds, contributed too. But the gap between the expected $80M budget shortfall and the actual $255M that those cleaning up after Fulop hightailed it across the Hudson gives some strong Lyle Lanley vibes.

The report itself said Mr. Fulop, who led Jersey City for 12 years, had built an “unsustainable financial house of cards.”

“And as he abandons Jersey City for New York,” the report stated, “that house of cards is now collapsing.”

Mr. Fulop, who last month took over as chief executive and president of the Partnership for New York City, said he disagreed with the fiscal analysis and that Mr. Solomon had supported at least some of the policies he is now criticizing.

“Had I chosen to run for re-election, we would have introduced another budget with no tax increase for Jersey City residents,” Mr. Fulop said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/nyregion/jersey-city-budget-deficit.html

Inside the VoteHub War Room: Why We Didn’t Call NJ-11 by Zachary Donnini

I hope someone will dig into how Malinowski performed so strong in Vote By Mail. Some might argue the AIPAC nonsense hurt his Election Day numbers, but there was no way he was going to carry Election Day by 20% even without those attacks. He’s a milquetoast, centrist, white guy, who’s already been in Congress, lost an uphill but winnable race, and then moved to an easier district. If we “need him in Congress” he should have ran again in NJ-7.

And why would we assume AIPAC has all the power (they clearly ate shit in this race) and that the progressive woman of color didn’t run a kick ass Election Day turnout program? Did Malinowski coast on Election Day confident he had banked a huge amount of VBM? Was his constituency just more aligned with the profile of VBM voter? This is a safe blue district, Mejia is exactly the kind of candidate we need in this seat. Excited the voters got to the right result, as they did in NYC and Seattle last round.

Related note, Early Voting is new in NJ, we’ll continue to see weird outcomes while voters adjust their behavior to having a new option.

The one warning sign was that while Malinowski held a 17% lead over Analilia Mejia in the absentee vote (AB), he trailed her by 9% in the early vote (EV). This stood out because EV typically falls between AB and Election Day vote (ED) in terms of vote choice composition, which suggested that Mejia could outrun Malinowski by more than 9% in the ED vote.

Rising anti-ICE sentiment seen in NJ special primary results by Sophie Nieto-Munoz

Mejia, who served as a senior advisor on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, made opposition to ICE a centerpiece of her campaign, organizing “know your rights” meetings in the district and hosting events called “ICE Out.” In one campaign ad, she called for the abolition of the 22-year-old agency, a position she reiterated when speaking to reporters Friday. She called ICE “a clearly unjust and unwieldy and dangerous institution.”

Letter from NJ migrant detainees says they feel ‘kidnapped’ without justification by Sophie Nieto-Munoz

The letter was written by Leonardo Villalba, an Ecuadorian detainee who has since been transferred out of Delaney Hall, and 24 others who were arrested by federal immigration authorities. Activists translated the five-page letter, titled “Our Cry,” from Spanish to English and published it on Thursday.

This is the first time a group of detainees released a joint statement from inside the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall, which is the largest immigration jail on the East Coast. The jail has been at the center of numerous controversies, including when a group of detainees escaped last year (they were caught and rearrested).

The Letter

Upon entering, we surrendered ourselves to border authorities who processed us. Some of us were given parole or a court date to continue our cases in accordance with the due process afforded to us by the Constitution and laws of the United States. We also attended periodic check-ins, obtained work permits and social security numbers, filed taxes, and were working legally and contributing to the economy. Therefore, we did not pose a threat to the country or the communities where we resided.

https://www.lahuelga.com/elgrito

Donate to Cosecha who translated the letter and is a leader on Immigration work in NJ

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/luchemos

Outside NJ

U.S. secretly deporting Palestinians to West Bank in coordination with Israel by Ghousoon Bisharat and Ben Reiff

Eight Palestinian men — shackled for the entire journey by their wrists and ankles — were flown from an ICE deportation hub in Phoenix, Arizona on Jan. 20 and arrived in Tel Aviv the following morning after refueling stops in New Jersey, Ireland, and Bulgaria. After arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, the men were put in a vehicle with an armed Israeli police officer and released at a military checkpoint outside the Palestinian town of Ni’lin in the West Bank.

…

According to people familiar with the details, the eight men deported on the initial flight, which was first reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, are residents of West Bank towns and cities including Bethlehem, Hebron, Silwad, Ramun, Bir Nabala, and Al-Ram. Some of them have held green cards, and several have wives, children, and other close family members in the United States. Some had been detained in ICE facilities for weeks; at least one was held for over a year.

Teachers Organizing Against ICE in Minneapolis Schools Are the Heart of the Resistance by Sou Mi and Luigi Morris

The impact of ICE’s repression extends far beyond immigrant families, too. It’s not just immigrants who are being targeted now — many of their Indigenous and Black students are also staying home. Long targeted by police violence, these communities understand that repression does not stop at immigration status; and that when the state escalates, it moves against all those it has historically oppressed.

But none of these teachers have stood idly by. Spurred by the initiative of some parents that the teachers have dubbed “supermoms,” teachers were quick to mobilize alongside the community as Operation Metro Surge began in December, just as winter break was setting in.

‘He’s not the same’: Father of Liam Conejo Ramos says 5-year-old continues to suffer by Regina Medina

The Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday featured a little boy accepting a Grammy award from Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny. Social media users speculated that the child was 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.

But Liam is in hiding with his family, after the boy and his father were detained and then released from a Texas detention center.

Liam is now no longer going to school — let alone a Super Bowl.

During the Bad Bunny show, a young boy and his parents watch TV. It is replaying Bad Bunny’s anti-ICE speech at the Grammy Awards from earlier this month. Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, hands a Grammy award to the child.

The rapper then rubbed his head and said in Spanish, “Always believe in yourself.”

ICE detainees from Maine being held under ‘inhumane’ conditions in Mass. facility, attorneys say by Joe Charpentier

Anyone arguing about whether or not we’re allow to call these concentration camps is intentionally missing the point.

Attorneys throughout Maine and Massachusetts told the Sun Journal they’ve heard stories of as many as 50 people to a cell — men and women in some cases — with no windows and limited airflow, a single camera-monitored toilet, aluminum blankets, no showers and poor quality food.

“They’re trapped in this little confinement cell, a dark cell with no sunlight, with multiple people,” said Shaan Chatterjee, an attorney at New England Immigration Law. “They’re basically torturing people into signing off on their own deportation.”

ICE detainees from Maine being held under ‘inhumane’ conditions in Mass. facility, attorneys say

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said the allegations of overcrowding and lack of access to lawyers are false.

NSA detected foreign intelligence phone call about a person close to Trump

Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence, who discussed a person close to Donald Trump, …

The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard.

But rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, Gabbard took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj.

One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office, Bakaj said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/07/nsa-foreign-intelligence-trump-whistleblower